Vandersay wins ESPNcricinfo 2024 men’s ODI bowling award

Jeffrey Vandersay has won the ESPNcricinfo 2024 men’s bowling award for his feat of 6 for 33 in the second ODI against India in Colombo.

Sri Lanka hadn’t won a bilateral ODI series against India since August 1987. They came into this one having lost each of their last six ODIs against India. They came in on the back of losing two unloseable games in a 3-0 T20I defeat.

This Sri Lanka side had finished ninth out of ten teams at the 2023 World Cup, and had missed out on qualifying for the 2025 Champions Trophy.

In the soil of Khettarama, however, lay a possible route to redemption. Spin. The first ODI, a classic that finished in a tie that shouldn’t have been, showed the way.

But Sri Lanka’s chances of bettering that effort in the second ODI took a blow when a hamstring injury ruled out the talismanic Wanindu Hasaranga. In his place came Vandersay, a perennial understudy who had played only 22 of Sri Lanka’s 158 ODIs since his debut in December 2015.

By the time of Vandersay’s introduction with the ball, Sri Lanka were struggling to stay in the game. India, chasing 241, were 80 for no loss in 11 overs. Rohit Sharma was batting on 53 off 34 balls. Sri Lanka had packed five spinners into their attack, but the three who had bowled till then had gone for 57 in seven overs.

Onto this stage strode the unlikeliest of heroes. From his second over to his seventh, Vandersay struck six times as India slumped from 97 for no loss to 147 for 6, scything through a star-studded top order on a pitch that, albeit helpful, wasn’t bringing his spin colleagues any success. Vandersay’s removal from the attack contributed to an India fightback, but he’d done enough damage by then, and Sri Lanka eventually wrapped up a 32-run win. They went on to win the third ODI too, and seal a most unexpected series triumph.

What did Vandersay do differently to Sri Lanka’s other spinners? He came on after the first powerplay, and spread-out fields allowed him to settle into a rhythm. He bowled legspin, and got the wristspinner’s natural bounce to go with generous amounts of turn – this widened the extent of natural variation he was able to extract from the surface. And above all, his line and length heightened the natural variation’s venom; releasing his legbreaks with subtle adjustments of wrist and seam orientation, he got the ball to test both edges of the bat from off roughly the same area of the pitch while relentlessly keeping the stumps in play.

The lbws of Virat Kohli and Shreyas Iyer summed up Vandersay’s menace; both batters stretched out to defend, and both times the ball hurried past the inside edge to strike the front pad, straightening a touch but turning far less than expected.