(Courtesy Sri Lanka Cricket)
By Srian Obeyesekere
The reinstatement of Kusal Mendis as Sri Lanka’s white ball captain by the national selectors in quest of lifting a flagging image in the international big stage in ODI and T20 formats does certainly raise new expectations among a 21 million cricket crazy nation yearning to see a change of fortunes to the winning high road.
Significantly, the 31-year old Mendis being entrusted with the job does see selector faith reimposed in one of Sri Lanka’s key batsman to create the desired turnaround after he was first entrusted with the job in 2023, but lost it as well as his place in the team in 2024 following a lean run with the bat when he was replaced by Charith Asalanka.
WEATHERBEATEN
Since then, Mendis is known to have gone through the mill to rediscovering the form that made him an overnight sensation just one year since his foray into big time international test cricket when he shredded world cricket’s powerhouse Australian attack to pieces in scoring a majestic 174 off 254 balls to becoming the youngest Sri Lankan to score a century versus the Aussies in a 2016 home series epoch triumph engineered by him.
EVOKED VIV RICHARDS AT 21
In that vein, it is rife going down memory lane when Mendis held sway bat like a goliath with his flashing blade. The very carefree mannerism by which he reached his century is memorable to those who watched his caressing bat at work moving to an off pitched ball just fleeting one to the off and hoisting it to leg for six to bring up his maiden test century that underwrote nerveless skill to moving from what to many batsmen the nervous 90s to decorating himself with milestone stardom. That effortless shot as the ball shot over a flash of Vivian Richards, the mighty West Indian legendary mauler of the ball.
CRICKETING TRYST
Since, then, it is a cricketing tryst that Mendis in time fell back from that giant stature by which he waded into the game. Time and time again, Mendis has remained but for that brief dark year in 2024 when he lost his captaincy and place in the team to coming back. Matured by the years, weather-beaten centering on occupation of the crease with heed to coupling run grafting to his explosive approach.
While one is made to conjure the loss of that magical phantom goliath atom in him of 2016 when he arrived that leaves one reasoning that bowlers worked on his footage, the fact that Kusal Mendis has comeback strongly in the last two years to reestablishing himself the wiser in a stonewalling wait and see approach to reclaiming what he lost is a manifestation of his indepth ability to readopt to taking on bowling attacks.
His 11-year long career record since making his test debut versus the West Indies in 2015 in a flow of 4757 runs from 73 appearances with 10 centuries and 22 half tons, 4890 ODI runs from 154 games with 6 tons and 35 half tons and 2622 T20 runs from 106 with 20 fifties does set him up as a foremost accumulator for Sri Lanka.
Indeed, Kusal Mendis has re-arrived. Perhaps his most telling foray to international recognition apart from several Player of the Match national batting performances has been the high scoring form in the Pakistan Super League for Peshawar Zalmi, dominating the run-scoring charts amassing 550 runs in 10 innings at a remarkable average of 60.11 and a strike rate of 169.59.
GRUELLING CHALLENGE
By and large, Mendis fronts a gruelling challenge ahead of seeing Sri Lanka through starting with six white-ball games – 3 ODIs and 3 T20s during the tour of the West Indies starting on June 3 ahead of the all important 2027 Cricket World Cup.
Overall, West Indies carries two test matches as well running up to July 7 crucial for Sri Lanka skippered by Dhananjaya de Silva in the World Test Championship.
CONSISTENCY THE KEY
Of course, achieving consistency will be the key slogan word to going up that high road for the newly appointed white ball captain and overly the test captain as well as sounded out by Sri Lanka’s new found Head Coach from South Africa, Gary Kitsten which he described to be his main task to getting Sri Lanka on the winning trail.
“There is no doubt about the skill of the players. My main task would be to work on would be to creating consistency in the teams,” voiced Kirsten in his first pow vow with the media recently since taking over from his predecessor Sanath Jayasuriya.