ambidextrous bowlers - Kamindu Mendis

During his stint as Australia coach between 1999 and 2007, John Buchanan had predicted ambidextrous bowlers in the future. Purists had scoffed, but Buchanan had meant business. During his stint as the Kolkata Knight Riders coach, Buchanan had included two bowlers who could bowl with either arm in the list of 45 probables, though neither man made the final cut.

Ambidextrous bowlers of the past

There had been ambidextrous bowlers before Buchanan. Leonard Shuter (brother of Test cricketer John) of Surrey bowled right-arm fast and left-arm finger-spin between 1876 and 1883 but for only 164 balls and one wicket across 38 matches.

A better bowler was Clem Wilson of Yorkshire, whose 52 matches got him 125 wickets at 18.69. In his obituary, the Wisden Almanack noted that he “bowled medium pace and possessed the exceptional craft of being able to use with effect either arm”. Wilson played for England in South Africa’s first two Test matches, but he did not get a chance to bowl.

Australian left-arm wrist-spinner ‘Chuck’ Fleetwood-Smith played 10 Test matches between 1935/36 and 1938. There used to be a rumour – a popular one – that he had started his career as a right-arm bowler and switched hands only after he broke his arm while playing tennis. However, as per Greg Growden in A Wayward Genius: The Fleetwood-Smith Story, our hero’s sister Pauline Mornane confirmed that her brother had never broken his arm and was, indeed, ambidextrous. He could bowl with either hand – but was better with the left.

Bowlers, however, did bowl with both arms, even at the highest level. Consider Kingston, 1957/58, with Garry Sobers on 364, a run away from breaking Len Hutton’s Test record. Hanif Mohammad decided to confuse Sobers. “Hanif, not a bowler of note, asked the umpire if he could bowl left-handed as I needed just one run for the record,” reminisced Sobers, as quoted by Osman Samiuddin in The Unquiet Ones. “I said it was all right and he could bowl with both hands if he wished.”

Charles Rowe of Kent did not quite switch hands at Test level, but against Sussex at Hove in 1980, he outdid Hanif in one aspect. Introduced as the eighth bowler that day, he came on to bowl his off-breaks and bowled Geoff Arnold soon. He got an extended spell, and with the match headed for a draw, decided to switch to left-arm wrist-spin, something he had bowled at the school level.

“It was the only ball I bowled in first-class cricket with my left arm and it was a long hop,” reminisced Rowe. “The batsman hit it in the air to cover where it was caught. So I’ve got a 100 per cent record with my left hand.” He became the first (and perhaps only – though these changes are not always tracked) to take at least one wicket with both arms in the same innings in first-class cricket.

At Kandy in the 1996 World Cup, Hashan Tillakaratne bowled the last over against Kenya when a Sri Lankan win was a foregone conclusion. Tillakaratne bowled the first three balls left-arm, informed the umpire, and finished the over-bowling right-arm.

Of course, most of these were unserious instances where the match was not in the balance. In the 21st century, however, a batch of ambidextrous bowlers has taken off.

A new generation

Roughly around the time Buchanan made his prediction, Pakistan and West Indies played in the 2000 Under-15 World Challenge Final at Lord’s. Pakistan spinner Mohammad Naeem bowled left-arm finger-spin to the right-handers and off-breaks to the left-handers, but could not prevent the West Indians from winning a close match by two wickets. Naeem played 43 first-class matches – but mostly as a batter who sometimes rolled his arm over: he bowled only 37 overs in his career.

Around 2016, roughly when Naeem’s unremarkable career was fizzling out, Yasir Jan made waves in Pakistan domestic cricket. Not only could he bowl with either hand but – unlike his predecessors – he bowled at reasonable pace (about 145 kph with right hand, at least 135 kph with left, if we go by Aaqib Javed). The Lahore Qalandars signed him up for a 10-year developmental contract.

When Yasir was invited to bowl at the nets against the touring Englishmen, Alastair Cook asked him to bowl two right-arm outswingers to Joe Root, followed by a left-arm ball from the same side of the wicket without warning. Root’s shock left Cook in splits. Unfortunately, Yasir’s career fizzled out.

Tharindu Rathnayake, who bowls finger-spin with both arms, made his debut in all three formats in 2015, and continues to play in Sri Lankan domestic cricket. Kamindu Mendis, who debuted the same season, has gone a step ahead. He still switches hands while bowling, as he did during the ongoing series against India in the same over to Rishabh Pant and Suryakumar Yadav. However, Mendis has also evolved into a run-glutton in first-class cricket (he averages well above 60) and has hit two hundreds and two fifties in his first three Test matches.

As Mendis was busy bowling to India, Ben Kellaway of Glamorgan was doing the same against Surrey in the One-Day Cup, something he had never done before in professional cricket. In fact, like Rowe before him, he got wickets with either style in the same match.

Before moving on to Kellaway, let us return to Mendis’ contemporaries. When Jemma Barsby had started bowling left-arm “as a joke” at the age of 13, her father Trevor, a former Queensland player, advised her to persist with it along with her off-breaks. She backed both, often against the advice of her coaches. In a WBBL match in 2016, Barsby decided to switch hands against Ellyse Perry, albeit without success. Primarily an off-spinner, she uses her other arm as a surprise bowling option.

Part-time off-spinner Shaila Sharmin found it difficult to break through to the national side of Bangladesh, a nation where everyone seems to be able to bowl finger-spin. Since she threw with her left arm, she decided to bowl some finger-spin as well. Now 35, she is unlikely to add to her nine ODIs and 16 T20Is – but she did bowl with both arms at the 2014 T20 World Cup.

Like Sharmin, Vidarbha’s Akshay Karnewar began as an off-spinner but, at the insistence of coach Balu Navghare, decided to add left-arm spin to his repertoire. Still an active cricketer, Karnewar earned an IPL contract with the Royal Challengers Bangalore (now Bengaluru) in 2016.

The CricViz database also notes Marie Kelly, who has already played for the Northern Superchargers this summer, as a finger-spinner of either arm. Her ESPNcricinfo page adds a right-arm medium to her skillset. Mokit Hariharan, who made his Ranji Trophy debut for Tamil Nadu in 2023/24, and is a regular at the Tamil Nadu Premier League, bowls finger spin with both arms as well.

CricketArchive adds some others to the off-spinner-and-left-arm-orthodox list: Charles Kunje, a part-time bowler who played for Zimbabwe in the 2014 Under-19 World Cup as well as 45 first-class matches; Shyamsunder Krishnashriram, who debuted in first-class and List A cricket for the Colts Cricket Club in 2023/24; Deshan Fernando, who has played domestic cricket for four Sri Lankan domestic sides since 2019/20; and Lachie Bailey, left-arm finger-spinner and right-arm medium-fast bowler, who is making his way through age-group cricket in Wellington.

What lies in the future?

Bowling at the highest level is a difficult job. Ambidextrous people are rare. It is only logical for the intersection of those two sets to be a really small one.

Even baseball does not have ambidextrous pitchers. There were switch pitchers, even in the 19th century, but Greg A Harris (MLB debut 1981) is credited as the first at the MLB, while Pat Venditte (MLB debut 2015) was the first to switch on a regular basis. In fact, Venditte forced the Professional Baseball Umpire Corporation to introduce a new rule. Pitchers now have to “indicate visually” which arm they would use, and cannot change arms against the same batter.

Of course, one may cite the examples of reverse sweeps and switch-hits, which are much more common in cricket. There is truth in that, but while these strokes existed even in the 19th century – William Yardley definitely tried twice in 1870 – they remained rarities until the late 1990s and became universal only in the T20 era.

The shots needed a wave, created by a demand of making the most of gaps on the off-side. Perhaps switch bowling needs a wave too. Or perhaps all it needs is a team management to encourage it the way Bob Woolmer and Dermot Reeve did for the then-taboo reverse-sweep at Warwickshire in the 1990s.

Meanwhile, there is little doubt that more bowlers are experimenting around the world, especially when every franchise team scout is looking for a USP in an unknown cricketer. The next generation of cricketers is likely to have more ambidextrous bowlers, eventually culminating in one (or more) of exceptional quality. After all, it is match-up – but at the next level.

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