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Using simple principles paid dividends

S. Ram Mahesh

Muralitharan’s and Mendis’s craftiness and creativity did India in

— Photo: AFP

SPECIAL IS SPECIAL DOES: Sri Lanka’s spinning sensation Ajantha Mendis befuddled the Indian batsmen with his varied deliveries and the ‘carom ball’ that dismissed Rahul Dravid was a treat to watch.

Colombo: For all the alluring intricacies cricket writers are apt to imagine into existence, the very best cricketers, indeed the most creative, are those who pare the craft down to its simplest principles.

That isn’t to say these intricacies don’t exist; they do but often they serve as the means to an end, not an end in themselves, and most cricketers are practical creatures, with an eye on the next run, the next wicket, the next dismissal.

After Muttiah Muralitharan and Ajantha Mendis had combined for 19 of 20 Indian wickets in the first Test at the Sinhalese Sports Club, bowling with ineffable trickery and establishing the primary narrative of the three-Test series, Murali explained most simply their plan of action.

Putting pressure

"Us bowling together, the runs weren’t coming," said the great spinner. "So the batsman has to do something to get the runs.

They committed mistakes and that’s why we got wickets. That’s what happens when there is pressure from both ends."

The theme of pressure at both ends was reprised by Mendis and Mahela Jayawardene. The reasons for this pressure — apart from that old staple, "We bowled in good areas" — weren’t elaborated, although one was alluded to.

Jayawardene referred to how, after Mendis’s introduction, Sri Lanka could afford Muralitharan more creative freedom — liberating him, in a sense. "When somebody else is putting that much pressure at the other end and picking up wickets as well, it opens up both ends for Murali to attack," said the Sri Lankan captain.

"He doesn’t really have to control the runs as well as attack. Now he just has to focus on attacking and picking up wickets, which is what he wants."

The change in Muralitharan’s role (and his perception of it) sets the context. It doesn’t, however, entirely explain the success of Muralitharan and Mendis against a batting line-up that has justly earned a reputation of playing spin better than most. The explanation eludes generalisation — for, cricket is a game devoted to the particular — but there are common threads of light that illuminate.

The essence of spin bowling lies in forcing the batsman to commit later than he would care to.

This is the spinner’s answer to challenging the batsman’s reaction time, as he can’t rely on air speed like a quicker bowler. Sleight of hand, flight and dip, curve and drift, and length are recruited for this purpose.

This done, the spinner must be difficult to line up — that is to say, he must do something off the straight, either sideways through turn, or vertically with skid and bounce.

Both Muralitharan and Mendis have designed their bowling to satisfy both prerequisites, and in a manner that has rarely been seen before.

Difficult to pick

After all these years, Muralitharan remains difficult to pick from the hand — Terry Jenner, who knows a thing or two about spin bowling, said the off-spinner’s incredibly pliant wrist makes the doosra almost indistinguishable from the stock ball.

Even Sachin Tendulkar, not merely one of the best at reading the bowler’s hand but a man who has seen a lot of Muralitharan, got it wrong a couple of times.

Moreover, the genius bowler often operated around the wicket to the right-handers, forcing the batsmen to contend with a whole different set of angles. His evolution from a monochrome bowler, one who bowled a huge off-break from over the wicket, to a master in command of all of spin’s subtleties has been fulfilling to watch.

Mendis, a Second Lieutenant in the artillery regiment at Panagoda, isn’t a one-off, for there were Jack Iverson and John Gleeson before him. But that doesn’t detract from his uniqueness.

He was nerveless on debut, although he wasn’t tested by batsmen determined to attack him (his incredible domestic record suggests few do).

He also showed he could set batsmen up with a sequence of deliveries, each insidiously and independently asking difficult questions.

Why Mendis is a danger

Mendis’s dismissal of Rahul Dravid for his first Test wicket illustrated why he is such a difficult proposition.

The delivery that did his bidding was the ’carom’ ball, sprung from a middle finger, which after being folded along the seam with the palm facing the batsman, flicks forward.

The combination of the delivery’s inscrutability and its length coerced Dravid to commit late. The undercut applied caused it to skid on Dravid, the leg-cut took it away.

For the Indian team, which travelled to Galle on Sunday, much work remains if it is to win the series.

Confronted at the SSC by a relentless interrogation from both ends, the batsmen’s insecurities took several forms: braggadocio, desperation, undue tentativeness.

Keep in mind however that this is a line-up eminently capable of the transcendental — often immediately after they are written off, like they were at Lord’s and the MCG last year.

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