Kusal Mendis

Kusal Mendis began his international career with the weight of being the next big thing in Sri Lankan cricket. A recipient of the prestigious Schoolboy Cricketer of the Year award in Sri Lanka in 2013. While representing the Prince of Wales’ College, Mendis was quickly drafted in for the 2014 U-19 World Cup as Sri Lanka captain.

His path towards becoming a regular in Sri Lanka's top order was set, which perhaps arrived quicker than anticipated. After only 16 domestic games as a professional, Mendis was thrust into the international setup at the age of 20, making his debut against the West Indies in October 2015. His First Class debut had only happened in January of the same year.

A right-handed wicketkeeper-batter, Mendis started out in his career during the transition time of Sri Lanka cricket following the retirement of Kumar Sangakarra and Mahela Jayawardene. Nevertheless, growing up, Mendis’s hero and idol was Aravinda de Silva, who entered a near-mythological status in the island nation by scoring a century in the 1996 World Cup final. It is after de Silva that Mendis models his game, a compact but aggressive approach.

This has yielded positive results for Mendis during crucial moments, despite his ongoing battle with inconsistency and difficulty in maintaining a prolonged stretch of good form. However, he has shown the ability to play significant innings on quite a few occasions. His 176 in the first Test of the 2016 series against Australia was perhaps the first such moment: with Sri Lanka reeling after a first innings deficit and two wickets down, Mendis survived and took his team to pole position. Sri Lanka would bounce back from that tough start and whitewash the visitors 3-0 in that series. Mendis’s score was a turning point, considered one of the finest Sri Lankan batting efforts of all time.

Mendis has been a mainstay of the Sri Lankan team across all formats since his debut, and is rapidly approaching 10,000 international runs — in line to become the tenth Sri Lankan to cross that threshold. Other landmark innings for Mendis include his 89 against India in the 2017 Champions Trophy, as he helped Sri Lanka complete their joint-highest successful 50-over chase. In the 2023 tour of Ireland, Mendis would score his first Test double-hundred, an innings of 245 which included 11 sixes, the most by a Sri Lankan batter in one Test innings.

With experience on his side entering the 2023 ODI World Cup, Mendis found himself suddenly burdened with the captaincy of his team in India, after Dasun Shanaka was ruled out of the tournament due to injury. It was sudden for Mendis, whose only captaincy experience at the senior level had been in the Lanka Premier League. Despite Sri Lanka’s struggles in the limited-overs format, Mendis will look to reinstate Sri Lanka to their glory days of the past, also climbing up those run charts along the way.

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