• Spinner bowls with left and right arms in Colombo • Joe Root scores 90 as England win by 43 runs

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

England faced one of the rarest propositions in cricket during their first warm-up game in Sri Lanka, with ambidextrous spinner Kamindu Mendis bowling at the tourists with both left and right arms.

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The 20-year-old from Galle had already scored a composed 61 for a strong Sri Lankan Board XI in Colombo – batting left-handed – when he took the chance to prove his true all-rounder status.

Asked to deliver the 14th over as England chased a target of 288, he bowled his first five deliveries as right-arm off-breaks to the left-hander Eoin Morgan and then informed the umpire he would be switching to slow left-armers when the right-handed Joe Root took guard.

He continued flipping throughout a tidy five-over spell, looking to keep the ball turning away from the batsmen at all times, with no discernible dip in the quality of his deliveries and figures of nought for 20.

It was not enough, however, as England went on to claim a 43-run win on the Duckworth/Lewis method.

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Mendis demonstrated his unusual skill during two editions of the Under-19 World Cup – with one video from the 2016 tournament attracting more than 430,000 views on YouTube. The Indian bowler Ashkay Karnewar has a similar ability and surprised Australia during a warm-up match in Chennai last year.

If not unheard of, ambidextrous bowlers are a collector’s item in top-level cricket. Another Sri Lankan, Hashan Tillakaratne, reverted from his preferred right hand to his less-favoured left in a hefty win over Kenya during the 1996 World Cup, while others, including the former England captain Graham Gooch, have been known to deliver with their “wrong” arm in stalemates.

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In Colombo, Joe Root and Morgan made every attempt to get over the line before dark clouds returned – piling on 78 runs in 9.1 overs only to be cut short by a second and final bad light break. Root was unbeaten on 90 and Morgan on 91 when the end came.