Regulars | The List >> Mendis beats a Bedser best

Which bowlers have taken the most wickets in debut series of varying length

Travis Basevi and George Binoy August 13, 2008

The last time a Sri Lankan bowler took more wickets than Muttiah Muralitharan in a Test series - barring the one at home against South Africa in 2004 where he played only one match - was when West Indies visited in 2001-02. Murali would have topped the wickets tally again against India had it not been for a record-breaking performance from Ajantha Mendis in his debut series. Mendis' 26 wickets at 18.38 apiece was the record for most wickets by a debutant in a three-Test series. This week's List looks at bowlers with the most wickets in debut series of varying length.

The record that Mendis broke belonged to Alec Bedser, which he set during a three-Test rubber against India in 1946. Bedser took 24 wickets in five innings at 12.41, including 11-wicket hauls in the first two Tests. His 7 for 49 at Lord's was the second-best performance in an innings on debut, after Albert Trott's 8 for 43 against England at the Adelaide Oval in 1895.

Does anyone remember Franklyn Saliya Ahangama? He was a Sri Lankan medium-pacer fast-tracked into the Test side less than two weeks after his first-class debut with Sri Lanka Colts in 1985. He dismissed Mohammad Azharuddin with his fourth ball in Test cricket - the first of his 18 wickets at 19.33 apiece in the three-Test series against India. He took five wickets in his second match, at the P Saravanamuttu Stadium, which was Sri Lanka's maiden Test victory. Injuries, combined with the short supply of Tests, curtailed Ahangama's career and though he toured England in 1988 and 1991, the 1985 series against India remained his only Test appearances.

Player	Mat	Balls	Runs	Wkts	BBI	Ave	5	10		Series	Season
BAW Mendis (SL)	3	979	478	26	6/117	18.38	2	1		v India	2008
AV Bedser (Eng)	3	866	298	24	7/49	12.41	2	2		v India	1946
SR Clark (Aus)	3	708	317	20	5/55	15.85	1	0		v South Africa	2005/06
J Cowie (NZ)	3	839	395	19	6/67	20.78	1	1		v England	1937
FS Ahangama (SL)	3	801	348	18	5/52	19.33	1	0		v India	1985
Shabbir Ahmed (Pak)	3	714	341	17	5/48	20.05	1	0		v Bangladesh	2003
MRCN Bandaratilleke (SL)	3	960	339	16	5/36	21.18	1	0		v New Zealand	1998
RO Collinge (NZ)	3	655	265	15	3/41	17.66	0	0		v Pakistan	1964/65
RJ Shastri (India)	3	882	277	15	5/125	18.46	1	0		v New Zealand	1980/81
BKV Prasad (India)	3	855	375	15	5/76	25.00	1	0		v England	1996

The West Indian spinners Alf Valentine and Sonny Ramadhin are first and third on the list of highest wicket-takers on debut in a four-Test series. Both played their first Test at Old Trafford during the tour of England in 1950, which West Indies won 3-1. Valentine finished the series with 33 wickets while Ramadhin took 26. John Goddard was West Indies' next highest wicket-taker, with six. Valentine and Ramadhin bowled 800.2 overs between them and, bizarrely, finished with the same economy-rate of 1.59 per over. Their performances helped West Indies secure their maiden Test and series victory in England.

Player	Mat	Balls	Runs	Wkts	BBI	Ave	5	10		Series	Season
AL Valentine (WI)	4	2535	674	33	8/104	20.42	2	2		v England	1950
FS Trueman (Eng)	4	718	386	29	8/31	13.31	2	0		v India	1952
S Ramadhin (WI)	4	2267	604	26	6/86	23.23	3	1		v England	1950
W Ferguson (WI)	4	1296	567	23	6/92	24.65	3	1		v England	1947/48
S Venkataraghavan (India)	4	1545	399	21	8/72	19.00	1	1		v New Zealand	1964/65
JC Laker (Eng)	4	1120	548	18	7/103	30.44	1	0		v West Indies	1947/48
W Voce (Eng)	4	1130	584	17	7/70	34.35	1	1		v West Indies	1929/30
GAE Paine (Eng)	4	1044	467	17	5/168	27.47	1	0		v West Indies	1934/35
NGB Cook (Eng)	2	812	275	17	5/35	16.17	2	0		v New Zealand	1983
W Bates (Eng)	4	964	334	16	4/52	20.87	0	0		v Australia	1881/82

Australian legspinner Arthur Mailey's 36 scalps during the 1920-21 Ashes is the record for most wickets by a debutant in a five-Test series. He beat Frank Foster's tally of 32 against Australia during the 1911-12 Ashes. Mailey did not bowl in the second Test, in Melbourne. He took six wickets in Sydney, ten in Adelaide, 13 at the MCG (in the fourth Test), and seven more at the SCG. His haul of 9 for 121 in Melbourne is the best in an innings by an Australian bowler.

Player	Mat	Balls	Runs	Wkts	BBI	Ave	5	10		Series	Season
AA Mailey (Aus)	5	1465	946	36	9/121	26.27	4	2		v England	1920/21
CEH Croft (WI)	5	1307	676	33	8/29	20.48	1	0		v Pakistan	1976/77
FR Foster (Eng)	5	1660	692	32	6/91	21.62	3	0		v Australia	1911/12
AS Kennedy (Eng)	5	1683	599	31	5/76	19.32	2	0		v South Africa	1922/23
WW Hall (WI)	5	1330	530	30	6/50	17.66	2	1		v India	1958/59
GB Lawrence (SA)	5	1334	512	28	8/53	18.28	2	0		v New Zealand	1961/62
WM Clark (Aus)	5	1585	701	28	4/46	25.03	0	0		v India	1977/78
AE Hall (SA)	4	1505	501	27	7/63	18.55	2	1		v England	1922/23
MW Tate (Eng)	5	1304	424	27	6/42	15.70	1	0		v South Africa	1924
WS Lees (Eng)	5	1256	467	26	6/78	17.96	2	0		v South Africa	1905/06

Terry Alderman has the highest wicket-aggregate for a debutant in a six-Test series, a mark unlikely to be bettered for there hasn't been a series of such length since 1998. Alderman took 9 for 130 on debut at Trent Bridge during the 1981 Ashes and went on to take 42 wickets in the series, beating Lillee's 39. Alderman bettered Rodney Hogg's record of 41 wickets, set in the 1978-79 Ashes, and his 42 wickets is the second highest series-tally for an Australian after Clarrie Grimmett's 44 in five Tests against South Africa in 1935-36.

Most wickets in a six-Test series on debut

Player	Mat	Balls	Runs	Wkts	BBI	Ave	5	10		Series	Season
TM Alderman (Aus)	6	1950	893	42	6/135	21.26	4	0		v England	1981
RM Hogg (Aus)	6	1740	527	41	6/74	12.85	5	2		v England	1978/79
DR Doshi (India)	6	1838	630	27	6/103	23.33	2	0		v Australia	1979/80
DG Cork (Eng)	5	1106	661	26	7/43	25.42	1	0		v West Indies	1995
NS Yadav (India)	5	1407	577	24	4/35	24.04	0	0		v Australia	1979/80
PM Such (Eng)	5	1439	541	16	6/67	33.81	1	0		v Australia	1993
DW Headley (Eng)	3	788	444	16	4/72	27.75	0	0		v Australia	1997
Ehteshamuddin (Pak)	3	748	270	14	5/47	19.28	1	0		v India	1979/80
RMH Binny (India)	6	725	399	11	3/53	36.27	0	0		v Pakistan	1979/80
MA Holding (WI)	5	1125	614	10	4/88	61.40	0	0		v Australia	1975/76

In one-day internationals, the most wickets by a debutant in a series is 13. Shaun Pollock broke the 11-wicket mark, set by South Africa medium-pacer Eric Simons against the visiting Australians in 1993-94, when he took 13 in the seven-match series in 1995-96. That was equalled in 2008 by New Zealand medium-pacer Tim Southee, who took 13 wickets during the five-ODI series in England.

Shane Bond made the biggest splash on debut in a multi-nation one-day tournament. He took 21 wickets at 16.38 apiece in nine matches during the tri-series in Australia in 2001-02, beating established bowlers such as Glenn McGrath and Makhaya Ntini by seven wickets. The previous record was held by Simon Davis and Tony Dodemaide of Australia, who took 18 wickets each in the 1985-86 and 1987-88 World Series Cup.

Most wickets in a multi-team ODI tournament on debut

Player	Mat	Wkts	BBI	Ave	5		Series	Season
SE Bond (NZ)	9	21	5/25	16.38	1		VB Series	2001/02
SP Davis (Aus)	12	18	3/10	16.61	0		World Series Cup	1985/86
AIC Dodemaide (Aus)	10	18	5/21	16.05	1		World Series Cup	1987/88
MC Snedden (NZ)	10	17	3/27	21.94	0		World Series Cup	1980/81
BA Reid (Aus)	12	17	5/53	25.17	1		World Series Cup	1985/86
GD McGrath (Aus)	8	16	4/24	17.25	0		World Series	1993/94
B Lee (Aus)	9	16	5/27	20.00	1		Carlton & United Series	1999/00
IK Pathan (India)	10	16	4/24	31.06	0		VB Series	2003/04
DR Doshi (India)	10	15	4/30	20.86	0		World Series Cup	1980/81
CG Rackemann (Aus)	6	15	4/39	16.46	0		World Series Cup	1982/83
CJ McDermott (Aus)	11	15	3/30	32.13	0		World Series Cup	1984/85
SP O'Donnell (Aus)	13	14	2/19	37.35	0		World Series Cup	1984/85
MG Hughes (Aus)	9	14	4/44	22.07	0		World Series	1988/89
DR Gilbert (Aus)	9	13	5/46	28.92	1		World Series Cup	1985/86
SR Gillespie (NZ)	8	13	4/30	20.38	0		World Series Cup	1985/86

Click here for the full tables.

What's a Carrom Ball? | by Hilal

Ajantha's away spinning delivery to the right handed batsman is released with a Carrom like flick of the middle and index fingers, hence the term Carrom Ball.

Understanding the Carrom Ball

Carrom is a table-top game and the goal is similar to pool. The video here shows the use of the middle and index finger in Carrom.

Why is it hard to pick?

As opposed to the conventional spin bowler Ajantha releases the ball at a much quicker speed and as a result the batsman has little or no time to make an adjustment off the wicket. The grip is similar to an off spin delivery which would turn into the right handed batsman but in this case the middle finger flicks the ball in the opposite direction at the point of release.

Mendis the mysterious maverick : Will not sit back on laurels

Dubai: Ajantha Mendis's enigmatic run in international cricket has caught the game's fraternity with as much surprise as the Sri Lankan sensation's unpredictable deliveries.

From just three Tests the 23-year-old unorthodox bowler has bagged 26 wickets apart from pocketing 33 wickets from 13 One-dayers.

Mendis's sensational run has made him one of the nominees for the International Cricket Council Emerging Player of the Year award.

The soft-spoken Mendis, who answers every question with a smile, needed the help of his captain Mahela Jayawardene to translate from Sinhalese to English.

When asked whose wicket does he cherished the most, Mendis said: "Sachin Tendulkar's wicket is the best among all. I could not get his wicket in the first two matches and I felt I might not be able to get him out. Finally, I got him in the second innings of the last Test and thus stopped him from reaching a world record," he said with a twinkle in his eyes.

However, in his opinion the master blaster was not the toughest batsman to bowl to. Instead, he rates Virender Sehwag the toughest among all the Indians, who are generally good players against spin.

"Sehwag tried to take too many chances against me and I had to bowl at good areas to contain him," said Mendis.

This young spinner admitted that the series against India had added to his confidence.

"Before the series everyone told me that Indians are the best players of spin. So it turned out to be a big challenge for me. When I got the Indian batsmen out it added to my confidence. My goal now is to try and work hard and go on to do well against all countries," he added with great enthusiasm.

Rich tributes

Mendis refused to take all the credit for himself and paid rich tributes to Muttiah Muralitharan.

"I picked up a lot of wickets mainly due to Muralitharan bowling at the other end. He put a lot of pressure on the batsmen and so I got the opportunity to get the wickets. He also kept guiding me on how to control the ball and how to be patient while bowling against top class batting line-up."

What is his best advice from Muralitharan?

"The most important thing he told me is never to be afraid of the opposition. He also taught me the importance of planning to get a batsman out," he said.

Mendis has been compared with great spinners of the past like Jack Iverson and Johnny Gleeson and when asked about them, he said: "Frankly I have not heard about them."

Mendis, after an astonishing run, is still keen on improving his bowling.

"Right now I am concentrating on my accuracy and also want to be more aggressive. I need to learn to bowl in different conditions too," he concluded.

Opinion | Mukul Kesavan >> Spin kills

Never before Mendis has a spinner dominated Indian batsmen so comprehensively and collectively

August 22, 2008

I had followed India's Test fortunes for 45 years, and never once in that time had I seen the Indian batsmen devastated by a slow bowler through a whole series. Just before the Indian tour of Sri Lanka began, India were beaten by Sri Lanka in the final of the Asia Cup. Mahendra Singh Dhoni confessed that his batsmen couldn't read Ajantha Mendis at all. I was intrigued by the prospect of Tendulkar and Co. - who hadn't taken part in the ODI tournament - playing this latter-day John Gleeson over a Test rubber, but not especially worried because of India's record against spin bowlers.

They had played some good ones. The first Test series I followed was the MCC's tour of 1963-64, and England's main strike-bowler was that fine offspinner, Fred Titmus, who took 27 wickets in five Tests. Every one of those Tests, though, was drawn. In the last Test in Kanpur, India followed on, thanks to a marathon spell of fine slow bowling by Titmus, whose bowling analysis in the first innings read: 60-37-73-6. But he made no headway in the second innings, managing one wicket in 34 overs as India saved the match comfortably.

This set the tone for India's encounters with opposing spinners: the good ones like Titmus, Lance Gibbs, Derek Underwood, Ashley Mallett, Abdul Qadir, Saqlain Mushtaq, Shane Warne and Muthiah Muralitharan got wickets, but not consistently enough to instill fear. Underwood claimed one five-wicket haul in 20 matches. Warne, the greatest legspinner in the history of the game, averaged some 47 runs per wicket against India, and like Underwood managed five wickets in an innings once.

There was something purposeful about the way in which Indian batsmen set about spinners. I remember Tendulkar going after Warne in a first-class game in Mumbai in 1998-99, when the legspinner arrived, riding the crest of his reputation as the greatest spinner in the world. Tendulkar hit a double century, and Warne went for more than 100 for no wickets. Then Navjot Singh Sidhu decided Warne had to go in the Test series, and we were treated to the rare spectacle of convergence in cricket: a spinner walking up to the stumps to bowl and a batsman running down the wicket to hit him. VVS Laxman and Tendulkar, in the 2000-01 home series, nearly ended Warne's career; by the time India won the last Test in Chennai, Warne was reduced to bowling bouncers.

Murali has a better record against India than Warne: 88 wickets at a little over 30 runs per wicket, and more significantly he has bagged six five-fors. I remember a sensational spell of bowling by Murali at the Feroz Shah Kotla, where he went round the wicket, and for half an hour had the Indians groping as his doosras spat off the pitch and jagged away and his offspinners straightened. But for all his genius, Murali was never feared by Indian batsmen in the way that men like Fred Trueman, Wes Hall, Alan Donald and Glenn McGrath were.

Till the helmet arrived, most Indian batsmen were so vulnerable to quick bowling, that spinners, regardless of quality, were seen as light relief. After the helmet, they improved against the fast men, but retained the traditional view of opposing spinners as extras, men who made up the numbers. Occasionally, when the stars were strangely aligned, India lost a Test to spinners, as in Bangalore when Tauseef Ahmed and Iqbal Qasim caught India on a breaking pitch in 1986-87, but it was a happening rare enough to be remembered and brooded over.

Indians were excellent players of spin because the quality of spin bowling in domestic cricket was exceptional. In that Kanpur Test against England in 1963-64, India played three legspinners and two left-arm orthodox slow bowlers: BS Chandrasekhar, Baloo Gupte, Chandu Borde, Salim Durani and Bapu Nadkarni. The bowling was opened by the fearsome tearaway, ML Jaisimha, along with Durani. The proliferation of first-rate spinners meant that any successful batsman in domestic cricket played slow bowling very, very well.

	"Till the helmet arrived, most Indian batsmen were so vulnerable to quick bowling, that spinners, regardless of quality, were seen as light relief. After the helmet, they improved against the fast men, but retained the traditional view of opposing spinners as extras"

This basically meant that even the average Indian batsman read turn from the bowler's hand, not off the pitch, and used his feet to get to the pitch of the ball to minimise spin. Gundappa Viswanath, Sunil Gavaskar, Mohinder Amarnath, Mohammad Azharuddin, Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Laxman, Rahul Dravid, all played slow bowlers in this way. Even Indian batsmen of the second rank, like Ravi Shastri and Sidhu, treated decent spin bowlers with nimble-footed contempt.

So the Asia Cup defeat didn't worry me because the Fabulous Four - Tendulkar, Dravid, Laxman and Ganguly, arguably the best players of spin bowling in the world over long and distinguished careers, hadn't figured in that team. I wasn't complacent, but it was reasonable to believe that they would figure Mendis out. The last freak spinner they had played, Paul Adams, hadn't puzzled them for a minute. While Mendis was clearly the better bowler, given his limited-overs performance and Bishan Bedi's testimonial, how dangerous could a Test debutant be, given the collective experience of the best batting line-up?

Very dangerous. It was Dravid's dismissal in the first Test that set the alarms off. Nobody in the world plays later off the back foot than Dravid did. The sight of him, crease-bound, stabbing down on Mendis down a middle-stump line, missing by a mile and the ball taking the off bail was a more significant moment in the history of Test cricket than the much-celebrated ball, which Warne ripped across Mike Gatting to bowl him. For two reasons: Dravid is by some distance the better batsman, and offspinners aren't meant to bowl fast legbreaks.

Everyone has a theory about how Mendis engineered this unprecedented, spin-prompted collapse. So do I. Before going there, though, it's useful to remember that he didn't do it alone. If he took 26 wickets, Murali took 21 and the Sri Lankan seamers chipped in whenever they were needed. Still, after allowing for these supporting roles, what Mendis did was extraordinary. In the six Test innings played in the series, he dismissed Laxman five times, Dravid four times, Gambhir three times and Tendulkar once.

The consensus seems to be that they couldn't read his mystery ball, but the real problem seemed to be that even when they did read it (and by the end of the series it looked as if Laxman and Dravid had begun to recognise the knuckle-ball from the hand, in that they could distinguish it from his offspinner and his googly), they couldn't tell if the ball was going to zip straight through or turn away. Since the knuckle-ball pitched in line, if the batsman played down the wrong line he was either lbw or bowled. It must have been a bit like playing Chandrasekhar, not knowing if the googly was going to turn or shoot through like a topspinner.

The problem was aggravated by the fact that it was hard to go down the wicket to Mendis because his knuckle-ball was faster and shorter in length than his normal delivery; there wasn't the time to get to the pitch. Tendulkar, Laxman, Ganguly and Dravid were slower and less confident than they had been in their prime, so they stretched down the pitch in defence, but this didn't work as it might have done once, because the review system being tried out in this series meant that the big stride forward no longer received the benefit of the doubt.

Why did Sehwag succeed when the others failed? His technique has always been fundamentally different from that of the others. His footwork is minimal, he plays alongside the ball without committing himself to a line till the last moment and he played Mendis off the pitch. It worked for him because his hand-eye coordination is exceptional, and his instinct is to attack: Mendis never got an opportunity to set him up as he did with the more defensive Dravid or Laxman.

So is Mendis a comet or a star? The latter, I think, because unlike with other mystery men, a batsman could teach himself to recognise the grip of his knuckle-ball without ever being sure that he could read its turn. Given his accuracy, temperament and variety (we shouldn't forget that he bowls a mean offbreak and a decent googly) his debut signals someone special. Unluckily, it also announces the end of something special. Thirty years ago, in a landmark three-Test series, Zaheer Abbas, helped by Javed Miandad, caned India's great spin trio into retirement. Ajantha Mendis, I suspect, has just rung the curtain down on another great foursome.

Mukul Kesavan is a novelist, essayist and historian based in New Delhi. This article was first published in the Kolkata Telegraph

Mendis thanks Murali

Sri Lanka star Ajantha Mendis hailed the influence of fellow spinner Muttiah Muralitharan after being named emerging player of the year at the ICC's annual awards ceremony in Dubai on Wednesday.

"I never dreamt of this a year ago," said Mendis, who claimed 26 wickets to help Sri Lanka win the recent Test series against India.

"I picked up a lot of wickets only because Murali was bowling at the other end. He put a lot of pressure on the batsmen, and so I got the opportunity to get the wickets."

Mendis added: "He also guided me on how to control the ball and how to be patient while bowling against a top-class batting line-up.

"But the most important thing he taught me was to never be afraid of the opposition."

ICC Emerging Player | Images

He has easily been his country’s biggest revelation since Muttiah Muralitharan. But despite the impact 23-year-old Ajantha Mendis has had on the cricketing world in recent months, the young Sri Lankan spinner insisted life is as simple as it was before his arrival on the international stage.

Mendis’s trick deliveries, including the now well known "carrom ball" bamboozled Indian batsmen in the recent series. His performances generated plenty of media intrigue and it proved to be no different for the newcomer while he was in Dubai to attend Wednesday night’s LG ICC Awards ceremony along with skipper Mahela Jayawardene.

"Nothing has changed. I’m still the same person and I want to continue to be who I was before," said Mendis.

Jayawardene is not accustomed to playing second fiddle, but had little choice at a media conference as journalists and cameramen focused more on Sri Lanka’s latest weapon.

Asked for his first impressions of the mystery bowler, Jayawardene said: "He was not overwhelmed by the opposition. He knows his strength and what he can do. That’s the best thing especially the way he came into international cricket from his background. He had not played much first class cricket to have that kind of confidence."

Ajantha Mendis named ICC emerging player of the year

Sri Lanka’s new spin sensation Ajantha Mendis was named as the International Cricket Council (ICC) emerging player of the year at an awards ceremony on Wednesday.

The 23-year-old burst on to the international scene this year by taking an extraordinary 26 wickets at an average of a mere 18.38 apiece in just three Tests with his unique brand of spin bowling, including the ‘carrom ball’, which helped see his country to a series win over India.

Mendis, who topped the voting for his award ahead of a 25-strong voting academy from a trio of pace bowlers in Stuart Broad (England), Morne Morkel (South Africa) and India’s Ishant Sharma, after being nominated by a panel chaired by former West Indies captain Clive Lloyd, also starred in one-dayers.

In eight one-day internationals during the voting period, he took 20 wickets at 10.25. “I am delighted to win the award,” said Mendis after being presented with his trophy by Sri Lanka captain Mahela Jayawardane.

“It is an honour to play for Sri Lanka and I hope to continue playing for my country for a long time to come.” The Emerging Player of the Year Award was one of eight individual prizes given at this year’s awards.