Mendis Mayhem  

by Rex Clementine  

Sri Lanka’s last Test series win over India was recorded in 2008. Since, then it has been one way traffic with India dominating winning five of the six series with one being drawn. The man who scripted the 2008 victory was Ajantha Mendis, who in his debut series finished with 26 scalps, a World Record for someone on his debut series.

Mendis broke Sir Alec Bedser’s record that had stood for more than six decades. While Sri Lanka were celebrating, there were various questions being asked in India with several of their stalwarts’ places in doubt.  Star batsman V.V.S. Laxman’s autobiography ‘281 and Beyond’ sheds light into the happenings back in India aftermath of that series.

“Predictably, back in India, the questions started to be raised over our places. Sachin was never going to be under scrutiny but Rahul, Sourav and I felt the pressure,” Laxman goes onto say.

“We knew we had let the team down and we felt the heat. While we were confident we would bounce back, we were not sure if the selectors shared that confidence,” Laxman adds.

“Even though the conditions in Sri Lanka aren’t very different from those in India, we have always found Sri Lanka in their backyard a very difficult side to overcome. In 2008, we had the added challenge of facing up to Ajantha Mendis, the mystery spinner who had already destroyed us with a six-wicket burst in the final of the Asia Cup in Karachi a month earlier. At that point, the consensus was that Dravid, Tendulkar, Ganguly and Laxman, none of whom was in the Asia Cup squad, would handle him easily. How wrong everyone was,” Laxman goes onto comment.

Attacking opening batsman Virender Sehwag helped India to square the three-match series in Galle with a double hundred after Mendis had taken a match bag of ten wickets in the first Test at SSC. But it was back to square one in the series decider at P. Sara Oval as Mendis took eight wickets and Sri Lanka completed the series win.

“We had never encountered a bowler like Mendis. I had huge problems reading him. I was playing him solely as an off-spinner because his stock delivery was the off-break. His wicket taking delivery however was the leg-cutter. Mendis was so effective because he was so accurate and the length he bowled did not allow us to rotate the strike freely. I couldn’t pick the carom ball.”

Ganguly was the first casualty, retiring a few months later, but Laxman did not throw in the towel. India fared much better when they returned to Sri Lanka two years later and Laxman made a match winning hundred in the third Test. The mystery of Mendis had been decoded.