Cast your mind back to January. Kamindu was on the outside looking in \u2013 yet to make a mark in any form of international cricket. For years, he\u2019d been \u2018the next cab off the rank\u2019, yet that tag is misleading. Kamindu was more like a tuk-tuk driver searching for passengers in the wilderness; waiting for a fare which increasingly looked like it may never arrive.<\/span><\/p>\n Nine months later, he\u2019s in an entirely different position: not just a three-format player, but a fulcrum for Sri Lanka; a centrepiece to build around moving forward. It feels strange that he batted eight in his last ODI; when Sri Lanka next play 50-over cricket, he\u2019ll surely be ensconced in the top four. He\u2019ll bat at three in T20s for the foreseeable future. Yet, of course, it\u2019s in Tests that he\u2019s truly set the world alight.<\/span><\/p>\n His achievements have been unfathomable, his presence revitalising a resurgent Sri Lanka. At this point, it seems needless to regurgitate the hackneyed statistics. You\u2019ve seen them 1,000 times on Twitter. But, I\u2019m revelling in them. So let\u2019s go for 1,001. Kamindu has:<\/span><\/p>\n Become the only player in history to pass 50 in all of his first eight Tests. (Only six players \u2013 Kallis, Hayden, Stewart, Weekes, Edrich and Richards \u2013 have scored 50s in nine or more consecutive matches across the course of their careers).<\/span> That\u2019s a lot of tall towers. Strikingly, Kamindu is yet to be dismissed between 15 and 60. And he\u2019s only been out three times between 50 and 100: on debut, and twice against England this summer. Both of the English dismissals come with caveats. At Lord\u2019s, he looked to hit out with only Asitha at the other end; at The Oval, he fell restarting his innings after ending the second day 54*.<\/span><\/p>\n Essentially, once he\u2019s set, he\u2019s very hard to dismiss. For the moment at least, he looks like a player who simply has to get to 10. When he does that, you feel like he\u2019s on for a big one.<\/span><\/p>\n The ease with which he\u2019s taken to Test cricket is especially surprising given the oft-discussed gulf in standard between international cricket and Sri Lanka\u2019s first-class game. Prior to Kamindu\u2019s emergence, the fastest Sri Lankans to 1,000 runs in Tests were Roy Dias, Dhananjaya de Silva and Michael Vandort \u2013 who all took 23 innings. This is an unprecedented run. Let\u2019s take a deeper look at some of the features of Kamindu\u2019s game which have allowed him to thrive so far.<\/span><\/p>\n A solid defence<\/span> Isn\u2019t that defensive stroke a thing of beauty? Kamindu\u2019s bat comes down in a clean line, his body right behind the ball, his movements precise and compact. He doesn\u2019t take a big stride or push away from his body \u2013 instead, he plays it late, right under his eyes, the ball landing almost at his feet. It\u2019s the kind of shot that sends a message to the bowler:\u00a0Try something else<\/em>. We see the same against Will O\u2019Rourke:<\/span><\/p>\n Here, he shows a little more of his stumps, with his bat initially skewed slightly towards first slip. Yet, he shuffles across and straightens his backlift by the time the bowler is into his action. Again, he blocks with real authority, right under his nose and with his body behind the ball.<\/span><\/p>\n His judgment and temperament have also been impressive. Against the quicks, he\u2019s scored strikingly few runs through the V. In his hundred at Old Trafford, he\u00a0didn\u2019t take a single run<\/a>\u00a0off the seamers between mid-on and mid-off. The story was similar in Sylhet \u2013 his 164 featured\u00a0two scoring shots<\/a>\u00a0against the quicks through the V.<\/span><\/p>\n Clearly, Kamindu\u2019s identified the off\/fourth-stump line as the danger zone. When seamers land the ball there, he\u2019s patient and respectful: happy to defend with minimal fuss, and wait for deliveries in his areas.<\/span><\/p>\n Of course, lots of batters still get themselves into trouble defending. But thus far, Kamindu\u2019s defence has been resolute. At no stage has he looked in danger of being bowled or trapped lbw against quicks \u2013 his last 10 dismissals have all been caught, often when he\u2019s attempting attacking shots. He\u2019s only been bowled once in his Test career \u2013\u00a0 on debut, when he was undone trying to sweep leg-spinner Mitchell Swepson.<\/span><\/p>\n It won\u2019t grab many headlines, but the ability to identify and keep out good balls with confidence has been a cornerstone of Kamindu\u2019s batting in Tests.<\/span><\/p>\n Kamindu\u2019s restraint around off stump has been especially effective since it has been tied to devastating clarity when bowlers miss their spots. In my opinion, his willingness to attack balls outside off stump was the defining feature of his play through the England series. When seamers stray marginally wide, he\u2019s quick to pounce with a flashing blade \u2013 making full use of his long levers, supple wrists and fast hands:<\/span><\/p>\n Equally, he\u2019s assured enough to attack balls many others would defend. Take this delivery from Gus Atkinson. It\u2019s on a good length, shaping back in, not quite wide enough to leave. Lots of batters would get themselves in a tangle nervously pushing at it, but Kamindu trusts his eye and technique. He keeps a high elbow, maintains his shape, plays through the line and dismisses it to the fence.<\/span><\/p>\n And as you\u2019d expect from a player polished enough to attack the good balls, Kamindu is ruthless when bowlers overpitch. Here, he dismisses a Nahid Rana half-volley with the placement and timing which are quickly becoming his trademarks:<\/span><\/p>\n Width is his bread and butter; square drives, cuts and punches the jewels in his crown. Yet, he is just as quick to punish bowlers when they get too straight. Here, he takes a Rana delivery off middle stump, sending it into the stands with a flick of the wrists:<\/span><\/p>\n With Kamindu at the crease, bowlers don\u2019t have to miss their marks by much to end up getting punished. When O\u2019Rourke strays onto middle stump, Kamindu jumps on the ball with consummate ease, flicking it away to the fine-leg boundary for four:<\/span><\/p>\n Ultimately, Kamindu\u2019s ability to score on both sides of the wicket, and his clarity in attacking when seamers stray marginally either side of the off-stump channel, make him a nightmare proposition. In order to keep him quiet, bowlers have to maintain consistently tight lines. As soon as they miss, they find themselves under real pressure.<\/span><\/p>\n \u2018Get your foot to the pitch of the ball\u2019.\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s one of the first things young cricketers are taught, an old adage repeated by coaches across generations. Yet, some of Test cricket\u2019s most prodigious runmakers have looked to hang deep in their crease and play the ball late. Joe Root, Brian Lara and Steve Smith come to mind. Kamindu takes a similar approach.<\/span><\/p>\n Like all good players of pace, he picks up length quickly. There\u2019s no discernible trigger movement, and against the quicks at least, he doesn\u2019t take a big stride forward. Instead, his instinct seems to be to play off the back foot: he stands tall, remains\u00a0still<\/em>\u00a0and watches the ball right onto his bat. Playing the ball late, right under his eyes, has helped him cope well with variable bounce and movement.<\/span><\/p>\n Look at this punch against Olly Stone. Kamindu makes no real effort to move forward or back. He simply stands still, maintaining a great head position and letting the ball come to him:<\/span><\/p>\n This simple technique, and the emphasis he places on watching the ball for as long as possible, has meant he looks very comfortable against shorter bowling:<\/span><\/p>\n Equally, when bowlers go full, Kamindu doesn\u2019t plant his front foot. Instead, he transfers weight late \u2013 remaining compact and driving with economy of movement. He doesn\u2019t fall over, and his head always seems to be right over the ball at the point of contact. Unsurprisingly, more often than not he times it sweetly:<\/span><\/p>\n Sri Lankan batters are often felt to be fallible against the fastest bowlers. That\u2019s understandable: tracks at home don\u2019t generally offer pace and bounce; spinners dominate, so batters tend to be less exposed to quicks.<\/span><\/p>\n At Old Trafford, Mark Wood\u2019s pace discomfited Kamindu\u2019s more experienced teammates. In the first innings, he drew extra bounce and got the ball to balloon off Kusal Mendis\u2019 glove. Second time around, he did for Karunaratne with his very first ball, then sent Chandimal to hospital.<\/span><\/p>\n Yet Kamindu always looks to have\u00a0time<\/em>. In the second innings at Old Trafford, Wood came after him with a fiery spell of short-pitched bowling. Kamindu might well have been cowed \u2013 after all, this was his first-ever game in England, and his first time facing arguably the world\u2019s fast bowler. Instead, he took Wood on with confidence and clarity, sending the second ball he bowled him into the stands:<\/span><\/p>\n Here, he employs the same approach against Nahid Rana \u2013 unfazed by a well-directed, 140 kmph bouncer, he takes it on and hits it for six:<\/span><\/p>\n Of course, Kamindu\u2019s comfort against pace and bounce owes much to his eye and his ability to judge length early. Yet, it also reflects a fearlessness. At Lord\u2019s, when Olly Stone tried to bounce him out, he top-edged into the grille of his helmet. Many batters would have put the shot away, but Kamindu was nonplussed, and carried on hooking him beyond the boundary. Clearly, he backs his technique and ability \u2013 and doesn\u2019t allow his decision-making to be clouded by negative thinking. As Dinesh Chandimal put it during the Old Trafford Test,<\/span><\/p>\n \u2018He\u2019s a world-class player, as far as I\u2019m concerned. When I had a chat with him after the game, I asked him \u2018What is the secret?\u2019 He said, \u2018I\u2019m in a positive mind[set]\u2019. It\u2019s really good for the team if you have a player like him.\u2019<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n All my analysis so far has focused on Kamindu\u2019s game against pace \u2013 but it goes without saying that to thrive in Sri Lanka, you have to be a quality player of spin. Kamindu fits that bill. Perhaps the most astounding stat of all is that he\u2019s averaging 178 against spinners in his Test career so far.<\/span><\/p>\n While his game against the seamers is defined by small, precise movements, he\u2019s much busier against the turning ball \u2013 happy hitting with or against the spin, and unfurling a broad array of strokes.<\/span><\/p>\n En route to making 182* against New Zealand, he toyed with the spinners. Kamindu\u2019s quick to use his feet \u2013\u00a0 often dancing down the wicket, smothering the spin and putting pressure back on the bowler by taking the aerial route. Here, he latches onto a wide delivery from Ajaz Patel, launching the bowler over wide mid-off:<\/span><\/p>\n Two overs later, Ajaz lands the ball in a near-identical spot. Again, Kamindu shuffles down the track. Yet this time, possibly responding to the slightly fuller length, he waits a little longer, hits with the spin and comfortably clears long-on:<\/span><\/p>\n Equally, he\u2019s confident playing the sweep \u2013 with the full-blooded slog sweep proving especially productive. Here, Ajaz tosses the ball up outside off stump again. This time, he disappears over cow corner:<\/span><\/p>\n The fact that Kamindu can dispatch more or less the same ball to three different parts of the ground gives a sense of why he\u2019s so tough to bowl at. He has the range of strokes and the attacking impulses to manipulate fields and give spinners real headaches.<\/span><\/p>\n Through the course of the innings, he also had great success reverse sweeping. We saw fine paddles, balls hit hard in front of square \u2013 and this impressive piece of improvisation against Glenn Phillips:<\/span><\/p>\n And as you\u2019d expect from such a strong back-foot player, when the spinners drop too short, Kamindu gets into a great position and dismisses them with ease.<\/span><\/p>\n Hopefully, the above analysis gives\u00a0some sense\u00a0<\/em>of why Kamindu has enjoyed so much success thus far in his Test career. He has a clear and consistent approach; he\u2019s solid in defence and fearless in attack; he plays the ball late and maintains a great head position; and looks equally comfortable against high pace and the turning ball.<\/span><\/p>\n But, what does notching 1,000 runs so quickly mean? Is it a\u00a0guarantee\u00a0<\/em>that Kamindu will end up as one of the all-time greats? Not necessarily. A couple of examples might give Sri Lanka fans cause for concern. Vinod Kambli scored 1,005 runs in his first 14 Test innings \u2013 yet his next 7 yielded just 79, and he was quickly discarded. Gary Ballance provides another cautionary tale: he scored 1,029 in his first 17 innings and 479 runs in his next 25. That said, both Kambli and Ballance were exposed by short-pitched bowling, which seems unlikely to be an issue for Kamindu.<\/span><\/p>\n Of course, it is always hard to sense a coming storm when the sun\u2019s shining \u2013 but if there\u2019s a chink in Kamindu\u2019s armour, it is that he may be prone to nicking off early when he pushes at balls outside the off stump, especially from round the wicket.<\/span><\/p>\n Take a look at this dismissal, in the first Test against England:<\/span><\/p>\n It is strikingly similar to the first ball he faced in his Test comeback, en route to a maiden century in Bangladesh. Cricket is a game of small margins: had this chance stuck, would it have changed things for Kamindu?<\/span><\/p>\n More recently, we saw the same issue spring up against Will O\u2019Rourke, twice in quick succession:<\/span><\/p>\n Notably, all the above nicks have come early in his innings, when Kamindu pushes at balls away from his body, rather than looking to attack. More commonly, he\u2019s gone after bowlers and peppered the square boundary. In my mind, he must continue to do so: he\u2019s scored so heavily against balls outside the off stump, that the occasional edge is a natural and necessary trade-off. Even if Kamindu were to endure a run of low scores, I reckon he must stick to his aggressive approach. After all, his success so far has owed much to positivity, clarity of thought and a lack of hesitation.<\/span><\/p>\n Who knows where Kamindu will end up. All Sri Lanka fans will hope he\u2019s headed for greatness, yet regardless of what comes next, he\u2019s etched his name into the history books with his achievements over the past nine months. He\u2019s shaken off the tag of \u2018the ambidextrous bowler\u2019; now, he\u2019s known as one of the world\u2019s most exciting left-handed batters.<\/span><\/p>\n The kind of player you stop what you\u2019re doing to watch.<\/span><\/p>\n![\"elanka\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thuppahis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/KAMINDU-1.jpeg?w=180&ssl=1\")
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<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n![\"elanka\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thuppahis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Kamindu2.jpeg?resize=185%2C238&ssl=1\")
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\nEqualled Bradman\u2019s record of 1,000 Test runs in his first 13 innings. Only Everton Weekes and Herbert Sutcliffe managed it faster (both in 12 innings). Kamindu has become the fastest left-hander, the fastest Asian batter and the fastest in 75 years to 1,000 runs.<\/span>
\nScored 100s in his first Test against Bangladesh, England and New Zealand.<\/span>
\nBecome the 7th Sri Lankan to score twin hundreds.<\/span>
\nThose are some achievements. And check out this bar chart, showing his scores in Test cricket so far:<\/span><\/p>\n![\"elanka\"](\"https:\/\/ci3.googleusercontent.com\/meips\/ADKq_Nb6svfyu8BgAx2ocHbHAntocSfZ0fc_Mx8-bFaMqD4Au9jmNVgNTbcpLNiYKIEcieDPFR1T7wGANlR88t5Yw-CWiddI2AeFY1HPOL5Q0zEIjqPBa-DX-mxuu5KBDz-DBCNmvcRkxCvzumI4sQF2ORothtIqfKH3ese2XKlALVp2A2lzezuwi39fWm2-1kjnqywj8Esq15i22zK5XHmvJhWr6TH-_6j9szh8lcnneJTp4oG-QsE9QqXqgSagAKpciP9z3TAvt0X150Ac0kCd_F9z0goXtMdO41EnRunxk5VprhlUuUN2bM0jIw=s0-d-e1-ft#https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/w_2400,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9fd0dcea-4776-4930-8475-9c9ed450b94a_1200x742.png\")
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\nIt\u2019s not the most glamorous part of his game, but Kamindu\u2019s success has been grounded on rock-solid defence against the seamers. His approach is clear: against length balls in the off-stump channel, he shelves attacking shots \u2013 rebuffing the bowler with excellent technique.<\/span><\/p>\n\n
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