Sri Lankan spin allrounder Kamindu Mendis has become the first man to switch his bowling arm during an over in the IPL. He did it in his debut game for Sunrisers Hyderabad against Kolkata Knight Riders at Eden Gardens.
Brought on for the 13th over of the innings, Mendis bowled three balls of left-arm spin and three of offspin. He landed each delivery on a good length or slightly fuller, giving the batters no room to work with. The fourth ball of the over brought him the wicket of the right-hand batter Angkrish Raghuvanshi for 50 off 32 courtesy an excellent catch from Harshal Patel, running in from deep third.
Well before he got off a Bradmanesque start as a Test batter, Mendis was a curiosity for his ambidextrous bowling in the 2016 Under-19 World Cup. At senior international level, he bowled with both arms in the same over against Suryakumar Yadav and Rishabh Pant in a T20I last year.
Mendis' left-arm spin is marginally better than his offspin, which might be the reason he bowled just one over against KKR, as Raghuvanshi's dismissal brought together two left-hand batters in Venkatesh Iyer and Rinku Singh.
While it is legal to switch arms during an over, a fastidious umpire could make it a little difficult for the bowler by insisting they inform of the switch each time. Mendis didn't seem like he had to inform the umpire every time on Thursday. A practical approach seemed to have been followed as he was always going to bowl left-arm to the right-hand batter and vice versa.
Ironically, Mendis bowled with both hands against a side had consciously looked for ambidextrous bowlers in the past. KKR's innovative coach John Buchanan picked two of them, a spinner and a quick bowler, among 45 probables 2009.
Trust a Sri Lankan to cause havoc with logging the data in cricket. The previous man to bowl ambidextrously at international level was Hashan Tillakaratne, against Kenya at the 1996 World Cup. Before Tillakaratne, Pakistan's Hanif Mohammad, a part-time offspinner, bowled left-arm spin when West Indies' Gary Sobers scored his record 365th run - the highest score in a Test innings - in Jamaica.