Something that jumped out at me from the shambles that is the Sri Lanka v Pakistan Test I mentioned in my previous post, was the number of overs some of the bowlers have sent down.
Among them the young guy playing just his 4th Test having bowled 55 overs at the end of Day 4.
This new Sri Lankan bowler - Ajantha Mendis - looks every bit as mysterious as Murali will ever be. At work the other day we looked up his profile on CricInfo. When we read "Right Arm off break, leg break", a few of us looked at one another knowingly and claimed in unison..."another chucker!".
Feeling pretty cocking and self righteous, we headed off to YouTube expecting to consolidate what we already suspected...
How wrong we were...an ominous call came from the next office...."Stu, you better come and look at this..."
Well, he's got it all, and look at the action, "this, we can't even sook about..."
Exciting times! If and when this guy re-writes records, there'll be no complaints from here. My previous objections to Murali's action and objections to comparisons between him (Murali) and Warne are not based in Aussie bias, they are based in my subjective opinion about his action, and stories I've heard about what the players "really" think.
I doubt we can hear such speculation over Mendis. I actually really enjoy seeing records broken in the extreme. England being bowled out for 51, massive scores like Younis has just made, whatever. Sure, it's more enjoyable for me when it's my side doing the breaking, but at the end of the day, it's all about the stats isn't it?!
I think we'll see some go Mendis' way over the coming years. It looks exciting.
Check it out for yourself...
4 comments so far...:
So why does this post have 'Chucking' as a tag/label? :)
Drags in those hits Jagadish!! ;-)
this kid is awesome, hadn't seen that footage before but love the different views. Would have looked better had they then showed the three balls bouncing, but goot idea of the wrist positions.
Stu, any chance of a link to our new blog http://www.statecricket.com/ ?
Cheers,
Moses.
Mendis is very exciting to watch. What's interesting is that a lot of the commentators, after India's ODI series in Sri Lanka last year (not the recent one) said that the batsmen seemed to have figured Mendis out ... and he'd just taken 13 wickets at 12 each!
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