The number behind Kamindu Mendis, Sri Lanka’s new batting sensation

Mendis has come a long way since his teenage years when he flooded social media for his ambidextrous bowling. His limited-overs game is still in the works, but batting in whites is rapidly becoming his forte.

Eye-catching performances on the recent tour to England have demanded a promotion. On Wednesday, back in his hometown of Galle, Mendis stood tall against a ravaging New Zealand attack and relished his first innings at No. 5.

After a top-middle-order wobble, Mendis hit his fourth hundred, falling just short of guiding the team to stumps on Day 1.

For a struggling Lankan unit, expectations from the 25-year-old are growing with each outing. A closer inspection would tell that Mendis’s glut of runs may not just come in this one glorious stretch. He has managed the red ball with tremendous ease throughout his First-Class career, and this phase with the national side only seems to be an extension.

Mendis is only the eighth player ever to aggregate more than 800 runs in their first 11 innings in the format. That is a Bradmanesque start.

Sri Lanka’s Kamindu Mendis celebrates his fifty runs on the first day of the first cricket test match between New Zealand and Sri Lanka in Galle, Sri Lanka, Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024. (AP/PTI)

Early impressions sometimes go a long way in predicting the future of a Test cricketer. If one looks at the select chart of batters who have blazed through their early days in Test cricket before Mendis, it tells something.

It is a pantheon that has seen a sizable void between its last batch of inductees and the latest joiners. Of the seven batters who secured better Test starts than Mendis, only one (Vinod Kambli) debuted in the 1990s. None of them were from the two decades between 2000-2020. England’s Harry Brook, who debuted in 2022, stands seventh on the list, with Everton Weekes, Sunil Gavaskar, Don Bradman, Herbert Sutcliffe, Kambli and Frank Worell ahead of him.

Only nine batters have reached four centuries faster than Mendis. The left-hander also equalled Pakistan’s Saud Shakeel in recording a fifty-plus score in seven consecutive Tests from his debut. Among Sri Lankans, only Kumar Sangakkara has had a better streak in Tests, having registered fifties in nine (joint record) successive games.

Fifty First-Class matches into his career, Mendis’s average of 64.01 is the seventh-highest on the all-time charts headed by the imperious Bradman, who accumulated 28,067 runs at 95.10.

Mendis’s smooth start has also shown his ability to adapt swiftly to overseas conditions. Before the Bangladesh tour, over 96 percent of his 3,000-plus First-Class runs were compiled on Lankan shores. In early September, Mendis returned home from England as Sri Lanka’s highest run-scorer, scoring 267 runs at 53.40 in his maiden trip there.

By the end of the second Test against the Kiwis later this month, Mendis would have most likely become Sri Lanka’s highest run-scorer this World Test Championship cycle, ushering in his 26th birthday as the brightest long-format prospect from the island nation since the retirements of Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene.