PORT-OF-SPAIN (Trinidad), April 12: Tougher days surely lie ahead, but Ajantha Mendis appears to be a spin bowler with a bright future based on the evidence of his One-day International debut for Sri Lanka against the West Indies on Thursday at Queen’s Park Oval.

The 23-year-old from Moratuwa bowled impressively to collect three wickets for 39 runs from his quota of 10 overs, as Sri Lanka narrowly failed to win the first of their three ODIs against Chris Gayle’s side.

It brought to mind Muttiah Muralitharan, the Sri Lanka off-spin bowling legend, when he first stepped onto the international scene with his freakish bowling action.

Mendis trapped Gayle lbw with a delivery that went straight on, bamboozled Darren Sammy with a flipper that totally squared up the batsman and skidded through to hit the top of off-stump, before holding his nerve after Jerome Taylor clubbed him for six, tossing the next ball up having caught on the long-on boundary.

Even Ramnaresh Sarwan appeared clueless at times to what Mendis was delivering, and at one stage, after being deceived by the flight and the turn of a delivery, the West Indies vice-captain looked quizzically at the young spinner with an expression that seemed to suggest “what freak of nature have Sri Lanka unearthed now”.

West Indies all-rounder Dwayne Bravo, who won Man-of-the-Match, had to agree that it was difficult to pick Mendis.

“To be honest, when we saw his stats – after 19 first-class matches, he had 111 wickets at an average of 14.54 – we knew he had to be bowling something good,” Bravo said.

“Sarwan had problems picking him, and from the time we saw this, most of the batters retreated to the dressing room, and had a close look at his hand on the TV monitor,” Bravo added.—AFP