A right-arm, slow-medium bowler, Ajantha Mendis is raising eyebrows and has made lot of keen cricket observers sit up and take notice. He is a bowler who has all the qualities to be an international star in not too a distant future. A spinner with a rich repertoire of deliveries - googlies, offbreaks, top-spinners, flippers and legbreaks - will be a handful soon. He should be nurtured carefully and in Mahela Jayawardene he has a captain who is shrewd, intelligent and smart. And under Muttaih Muralitharan, he can really grow into a formidable bowler like Murali himself. Already batsmen are confounded by the variety of deliveries he is able to deliver and wonder what his stock delivery is. His domestic record has been highly impressive - 111 wickets from 19 matches at 14.54. No doubt he was called up to the Sri Lanka squad for the tour of West Indies in April 2008.
Now with an impressive performance in his debut One-Day International match - 10-1-39-3 (3.90 runs per over) - he has shown the world that he belongs at the highest level. At 23, he has enough time on his hands to become one of the greats of the game. We are watching the beginning of, what will turn out to be, a truly remarkable journey.
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