Cover Points : Ajantha Mendis

Miller and Sobers over Bradman(TM)

dcsiva — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 12:58:00 GMT

There have been many posts on Bradman's anniversary. Nestaquin's has some great youtube clips of Bradman. And, perhaps inevitably, some backlash or at least reappraisal. Here's Jrod on why we should be celebrating Keith Miller instead. And Rick not on Bradman himself so much as on the hype of Bradman(TM):

The handling of the Bradman name since his death in 2001 has also been problematic. It was a great honour when the main highway linking Adelaide to its airport was renamed Sir Donald Bradman Drive. But was it right to then prevent businesses located on that highway from amending their trading names to reflect that they could be found "On Bradman"? What, really, was wrong with marketing Anzac Cookies in India as Bradman Cookies? What other Australian icon would grab the attention in India? (OK, Brett Lee Bickies can't be too far away.)
...
But a truly abominable invocation of the Bradman name is the event held at the Westin Hotel last night. The "Bradman Oration" is the top end of town's self-important evening of adulation for a man with whom the nearest thing they have in common is that he was a stockbroker in Adelaide. Ponting may seem an unlikely orator, but he is a far more appropriate choice than some of the past speakers at the BO. John Howard, when he was Prime Minister, I could understand; Michael Parkinson I would have understood if he gave it during an Ashes tour (which 2003-04 was not); but Alan Belford Jones? and General Peter Cosgrove?

Get Sam Loxton (and some of the other surviving 1948 Aussies) to give the next "oration". And forget the $495 per head ticket price and hold it somewhere so that the schoolkids of Cootamundra and Bowral can get in for free.

Meanwhile, England and India very well indeed in their respective ODI series'. The end, or an end at any rate, might be coming up soon for Ajantha Mendis. Batsmen have started reading Mendis from the hand:

The left-hander attributed his knock to his ability to read the Sri Lankan spinners and said he could pick Mendis off his hand.

"I was watching their hands, especially Mendis'. My plan was that if I can read his hand I can play well. That was the game plan." he said.

"I think I was able to read both Murali and Mendis well. Scoring 76 and helping my team win is satisfying," he added.

Finally, from the county cricket department, the great Mushtaq has retired. Long may his beard grow.

Champions, but not in Pakistan

dcsiva — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 12:45:00 GMT

Much electronic ink has been refreshed on the topic of the Champions Trophy and playing in Pakistan. Here's Amit Bajaj's take on the contrast between the BCCI and ACA:

The ACA has given more weightage to the report given by Reg Dickason, based on his short stay in Karachi. You can't blame the PCB for being unhappy as the ACA has largely ignored the more comprehensive report provided by Nicholls Steyn, the security experts hired by the ICC.

The BCCI's stand is not any show of bravado - it just shows a more intelligent understanding of the situation in Pakistan. Imran Khan does have a point when he points out that no cricket team or player has been the target of any terrorist activity ever. With the Australian players, it looks like their wives, girlfriends and the ACA have a bigger influence on their decision than an official ICC report. What remains to be seen now is how Cricket Australia reacts. Or will it be ICC that comes to its rescue?!

Here's Ottayan on the relationship between the ACA and the Players' Association in Australia:

However, yesterday’s statement from the Player’s Association that they will not play in Pakistan has added a new twist to the story. ICC feels that Cricket Australia is using the Players Association to escape making a decision.

In fact, an ICC source, who refused to be named, questioned whether the governing boards were hiding behind their "players" so as not to further antagonise India and the powerful Asian bloc which effectively rules the game.

This seems disingenuous to me at best. What on earth is wrong with having a Players' Association that wants to look after its members? There argument is wrong-headed, but they should have some input into the process surely?

Ottayan also links to an article by Mukul Kesavan on Indian batsmen and Ajantha Mendis. And, finally, Kartikeya also on the Fab Four as media project.

More Mendis, no Sehwag

dcsiva — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 12:40:00 GMT

Sri Lanka beat India easily. Will India come back again in the second game? Dileep Premachandran says Mendis is the culprit:

Eight of the Indians reached double figures, but came no nearer to finding a solution to the Mendis conundrum that has ruined their tour of the teardrop-shaped isle. Mendis, who took out Dravid and Laxman for fun during the Test series, accounted for Yuvraj Singh and MS Dhoni as India's youth proved as clueless as the experienced hands had against Sri Lanka's spin duo.

Soulberry is less than impressed by the Indian batsmen's inability to watch the ball:

What can it be about Mendis that foxes Indian players? Are they watching the hand? Are they watching the ball's rotation of seam and flight to judge the final result? Are they aware of the pace of the ball as a matter of sixth sense? Why can't they come forward and play? Why can't they use their feet and play? If they watch the ball closely and use their feet, don't tell me there is a spinner (and this one isn't a big one...he relies on deception...fooling players with a large variety of balls with subtle varations) who cannot be dealt with 7 out of 10 times!

I know the above para opens me to mockery...here are cricket gurus with lakhs of runs and hundreds of collective man-years playing and failing, and here I am, an arm-chair pundit talking this and that. I acknowledge that I am open to mockery, but only a fool ignores suggestions when he has no answers. The least anyone can do is look at the options and suggestions and reject those which do not work.

Martyd succumbs to the Mendis "hype" with a great work on Mendis in action. But more of a problem for India is that Muralitharan has started taking wickets again (just tailenders this time) and that Vaas and Kulasekara bowled well at the beginning. Will it all look different again, when Sehwag comes back?

Meanwhile a couple of tennis ball cricket authorities in India are fighting for recognition of tennis ball cricket as an official sport. Has no judge seen Chennai 28 yet?! And The Atheist gives us a lovely fan's eye view of the Friends Provident Final.

Test cricket at its best

dcsiva — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 15:43:00 GMT

What a lovely few days for Test cricket and the duels it produces. Freddie Flintoff got all riled up when Jacques Kallis' dismissal was reversed. Here's King Cricket's take:

This was no less a batsman than Jacques Kallis too - easily one of the best Test batsmen in the world and most definitely someone who doesn’t surrender his wicket easily. He’d actually got himself in as well. He’d just passed 50.

Even before the non-dismissal Flintoff was firing. Yorker, bouncer, bouncer, no run, yorker onto the boot… Not out.

At this point Andrew Flintoff summoned down the angel of pure bilious rage and punched his lights out, stole his bag of rage and put it to use.

Here's the Flinster in his pomp:

Will calls it a magical performance. And Patrick Kidd compares it some other great cricketing duels.

Meanwhile, in Sri Lanka, not one, no two, but three superb displays of cricket skill. Virender Sehwag taking on the Lankans all by himself with the bat:

Murali. Vaas. Mendis. A pitch with one wet end and one cracked end. Rain. Reason. Virender Sehwag defied them all.

And Harbhajan Singh rediscovered off-spin bowling:

Harbhajan though ensured that such talk was at least kept in abeyance. Soon after tea, bowling from the Fort End, he started to tease and torment with both turn and bounce. Apart from a seven-for on a dubious pitch at Kanpur in April, he hasn't done anything of note in ages, and this was a welcome return to the attacking approach that served him so well in home series against Australia in 2001 and '04. Like Mendis, he didn't flight the ball too much, and deliveries bowled at 90 km/hr hurried batsmen into mistakes.

By no means least, Dileep also covers Mendis' taking wickets all around Sehwag:

Sandwiched between the two was a sterling performance from Ajantha Mendis, whose carrom ball once again skittled India and eclipsed Muttiah Muralitharan. It says much about India's batting that two partnerships added 267 of the 329 that they made. The other batsmen may as well not have turned up.

At 278 for 4, India were well on course for 400 and more when Mendis produced his special flicked delivery. It appeared to stop on VVS Laxman, and he looked aghast after he pulled it straight to midwicket. Laxman had been largely untroubled till then, both by Mendis and Murali, but his exit exposed the brittle lower order.

Taking Mendis out for a spin

dcsiva — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 12:38:00 GMT

Terry Jenner and Guddappa Viswanath are among the chorus of voices on Ajantha Mendis. Jenner is surprised that Mendis does not have a stock ball:

"Mendis needs to develop the stock ball which is very essential for leg break bowlers. When I heard that he doesn't have stock ball, I was amazed," said the Australian great, who is in New Delhi to oversee a bowlers' camp.
"World's best spinners have great stock ball. Murali [Muttiah Muralitharan] was one of them. As a coach, we need to teach basics not magic deliveries," he added.

And yet Mendis also requires greater variety?

"What he is doing has been done before by bowlers like John Gleeson. He is a good bowler but I am doubtful about his success in Australian and South African pitches. He does not have variety in his bowling," Jenner said.

Viswanath suggests that the Indian batsmen can easily handle Mendis. Apparently, they should watch his wrist and fingers:

"You've got to pick him [Mendis] up at the time of delivery. Our batsmen need to observe Mendis's wrist and finger movements at the time of delivery...then he'll become easier to negotiate," the 59-year-old said on the sidelines of a Delhi District Cricket Association (DDCA) function in New Delhi on Monday.

What does Vishy think they have they been watching until now? On the other hand he did deal with Jack Gleason pretty well back in the day.

The Mendis carrom ball

dcsiva — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 23:58:00 GMT

India take on Sri Lanka in a one month series, containing 3 Tests and 5 ODIs. The big draw is, of course, Ajantha Mendis. Here's Mohan on the Indian squad:

The major surprise is that Virender Sehwag is vice-captain of the Test team!
After his comments on the idiocy of back-to-back games in the Asia Cup and after his comment that he was “running on reserve”, not unexpectedly, M. S. Dhoni, Team India Test vice-captain, has opted out of the Tests citing fatigue.

Also, Irfan has been dropped and Ojha included. Ottayan has the stats on all the hard work Dhoni has been putting in for the team.

Ducking Beamers has a post on that mystery of a bowler, Mendis, and his carrom ball. Meanwhile the really shocking news has been Pepsi's non-renewal of Tendulkar's contract. "Insider trading" on his retirement, perhaps?

Mendis and bamboozlement

dcsiva — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 13:39:00 GMT

One thing that I missed from that astonishing last game between the West Indies and Sri Lanka was the emergence of a new Lankan spinner. Ajantha Mendis. Here's one description:

Even Ramnaresh Sarwan appeared clueless at times to what Mendis was delivering, and at one stage, after being deceived by the flight and the turn of a delivery, the West Indies vice-captain looked quizzically at the young spinner with an expression that seemed to suggest "what freak of nature have Sri Lanka unearthed now".
West Indies all-rounder Dwayne Bravo, who won Man-of-the-Match, had to agree that it was difficult to pick Mendis.
"To be honest, when we saw his stats - after 19 first-class matches, he had 111 wickets at an average of 14.54 - we knew he had to be bowling something good," Bravo said.

Q asks if he is good enough to be Murali's long term replacement. Suneer has a long write up on him. Here's a youtube clip from the last game. And finally, UncleJ's account of leg spinners. Some of Mendis' deliveries fit in there somewhere...