The most vivid sporting memories are generally seen in the flesh, but there was little more memorable in 2008 than a glimpse on television of a match being played halfway around the world.
It was a one-day international between West Indies and Sri Lanka. Its sole novelty was a young Sri Lankan spin bowler named Ajantha Mendis.
The moment of revelation came when Mendis bowled Darren Sammy, a lower-order batsman but one not lacking in ability. Sammy could hardly have been more bemused if the ball had disappeared entirely in its flight. Something remarkable had just flitted into view. The rest of the year confirmed that first impression.
India's batsmen, brought up in conditions that favor slow bowling, generally cope well with cricketing legerdemain and deception. Shane Warne, Australia's spin magician, had only a modest record against India. Yet India's batsmen were utterly confounded by the variations in pace, flight and spin that Mendis, 23, can summon up from his immensely powerful fingers.
In the final of the Asian Cup, he took six wickets for 13 runs against India. It was one of the best sets of figures ever in a one-day international.
Mendis then took 26 wickets in three five-day tests, the most ever in a three-match debut series, against the Indians. By the end of the series, India regarded Muttiah Muralitharan, international cricket's all-time record wicket-taker, as the softer option.
Mendis's averages per wicket - 10.12 in one-day internationals and 18.38 in tests - look like something from another, much lower-scoring age.
Cricket goes into 2009 with many imponderables, some entirely off-field. None on the field is more fascinating than whether Mendis maintains that early promise.
For now, he is a "mystery spinner." Batsman cannot work out his method and predict what is coming toward them.
Where earlier generations had only the evidence of their own eyes, experience and instincts and the game's grapevine, the moderns have access to intensive video analysis and nobody will be examined more closely than Mendis.
Those early averages, particularly the one-day one, will be hard to maintain unless Mendis is truly freakish. Yet they do suggest that Mendis will be a force for years to come.
Three remarkable spinners - Warne, Muralitharan and India's Anil Kumble - have towered over the past two decades.
Batsmen learned their methods and went cross-eyed examining film. Yet they continued to take hundreds of wickets. Mendis appears to have the mix of subtlety in variation and robustness in method to do the same.
Unlike Muralitharan, Mendis does not have to face worries about the legality of his bowling action. He is absent with an ankle injury from Sri Lanka's current series against Bangladesh, but he should be back in January for the greater challenge of tests in Pakistan.
A controversial figure among Sri Lanka's Tamil minority because he plays domestic cricket for the army club, he may, nevertheless, prolong the career of the Tamil hero, Muralitharan, who no longer has to carry the burden of bowling opposing teams out by himself.
Mendis is not the only rising practitioner of what was once thought a dying art. Shakib al-Hasan, a 21-year-old, could be the match winner Bangladesh has been looking for since it entered test cricket and India has a new wrist-spinner in Amit Mishra.
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