Since the Asia Cup, he’s maintained a rare run of red-hot form in a career full of what-ifs. And tonight that meant an utterly breathtaking takedown of Pakistan’s masterful quicks

Shashank Kishore10-Oct-20231:20

Maharoof: Never seen someone from SL striking it like Mendis did

Where do you place Kusal Mendis among modern batters? The holder of Sri Lanka’s fastest World Cup century.Even if you have a wild imagination, it would be hard to tag him as a great. His numbers are middling, way lower than what he ought to have had with that ability and gum-chewing swagger. It just doesn’t feel right. So forget about the Fab Four, or maybe even five or six.He cannot be discussed in the young-batters-to-watch category either, say alongside a Shubman Gill or a Harry Brook, because he’s already eight years old in international cricket.Related

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But let’s for a moment forget fancy world titles. By now, shouldn’t he at least be Sri Lanka’s Mr Consistent? He certainly wasn’t for a long time, but it seems the winds of change are here.Mendis had a rip-roaring Asia Cup, finishing as the second-highest run-getter. He carried that form into the World Cup warm-ups, where he bludgeoned Afghanistan for 158 in Guwahati. In Sri Lanka’s tournament opener in Delhi, his six-hitting spree in a 42-ball 76, which included a sensational takedown of Lungi Ndigi, stood out.And tonight in Hyderabad, with the stakes even higher – you don’t want to start a tournament with back-to-back losses – he took down the likes of Shaheen Afridi and Haris Rauf as if he were picking ripe apples at an orchard. So he’s been able to sustain a run of form, perhaps for the first time in what has largely been a frustrating ODI career full of what ifs.Kusal Mendis brought up his century with a six•ICC via Getty ImagesSo where do you bracket him then? Maybe a title for someone who thrills and frustrates in equal measure? Surely Mendis is a frontrunner for that.In ODIs, it’s either all or nothing. The middle ground isn’t his way. Often, there is a propensity to play a release shot to find his rhythm early on. This either helps flick on beast mode or, like in many cases in the past, leaves his fans tearing their hair out. Like Mickey Arthur often did in his stint with Sri Lanka.That hair-tearing moment duly arrived in Hyderabad too. Watching from the Pakistan camp this time, Arthur may have had reasons to celebrate for a change. After a series of full, fast deliveries that swung in late in his previous overs, Shaheen Afridi had dangled the carrot outside off in the seventh over with Mendis barely set. He nearly went “job done, thanks for coming”. Until, of course, Imam-ul-Haq put down a straightforward chance at backward point to turn a moment of absolute joy into another hair-tearing moment for Arthur, and all of Pakistan.What happened next?Mendis had flicked the switch and for the rest of the evening, he would go on to treat Afridi with disdain, repeatedly slashing him over square third, interspersed with elegance in the form of nimble-footed cuts. As for Hasan Ali, Mendis moved between struggling against his late inward moment to lofting him imperiously through the line. It was a high-risk game that bordered on the loose, but he wanted to dominate.

Babar Azam turned his gaze towards his middle-overs enforcer Haris Rauf to try and rough up the batters. It felt like a contest was brewing, but Mendis nearly turned it into a no-contest with just one shot: a silken straight drive that he enjoyed so immensely that he made eye contact with the bowler until Rauf looked away in disbelief.

At one point, Babar Azam turned his gaze towards his middle-overs enforcer Haris Rauf to try and rough up the batters. It felt like a contest was brewing, but Mendis nearly turned it into a no-contest with just one shot: a silken straight drive that he enjoyed so immensely that he made eye contact with the bowler until Rauf looked away in disbelief at having being punched so hard early on in his spell.This wasn’t the Jayasuriya-Kaluwitharana style carnage from 1996. It was somewhere between the mayhem of Jayasuriya and the calm of Sangakkara. The artistry added to the magic. The only missing element was the papare band. No Bollywood chartbuster quite matched Kusal’s beat this evening.The harder Kusal went, the harder Pakistan tried. At one point, Babar had a deep square and deep point for the short ball. Mendis killed it softly by opening the bat face to steer it fine, steal a boundary and quietly chuckle. You saw Rauf seething inside.There are shots certain batters play when they know they’re in the zone. For Gill, it’s the short-arm pull. For Virat Kohli or Babar, it’s the cover drive early on. For Mendis, it’s the sweep, the ability to throw spinners off their lengths by using the arc anywhere between deep square and wide long-on. In picking Nawaz over midwicket with one such shot, he raised the century of his partnership with Pathum Nissanka off 92 balls.Shaheen Shah Afridi reacts after getting hit for a boundary•ICC via Getty ImagesNissanka fell soon after, and Pakistan thought they’d found an opening for Rauf to nip out another. Pace, hostility, bounce – all check. But Mendis wasn’t done yet, willingly taking the open invitation to hook Rauf, striking him for a six in this fashion. It didn’t quite have the aesthetics of that Tendulkar pull off Andy Caddick – remember 2003? – but to hook one of the fastest bowlers going around without looking rushed spoke volumes of his readiness and the zone he was in.What more could Mendis have done? You wondered how he could top all this. And then he toyed with Afridi in his second spell, hitting him for three fours in an over. One of them a rifling cut so late that you could almost imagine Mahela Jayawardene grinning ear to ear in the dressing room. Then a six, off Hasan Ali, to bring up a 65-ball century that shattered Sangakkara’s record from 2015 and what was left of the bowlers’ morale.It’s the kind of shot you dread as a bowler, let alone a fast bowler fighting heat and humidity to spear them in at 145 clicks. And Hasan went for two more in a row next over, before the thrill of going after the cute sequence of 6, 6, 6 cost Mendis. While there was a sense that a double-hundred had gone abegging, an even stronger sense of pride in a special innings was all too palpable as Mendis walked off to a standing ovation.