There's a new slinga in town, in CSK's yellow, spooking batters at the death
He doesn't have blonde-tipped curls, but the slingy action, yorkers, dippers and the smile are all reminiscent of Lasith Malinga.
Chennai Super Kings have bad memories of Malinga - he broke their top order in the 2013 IPL final, then in the 2015 final, he tricked MS Dhoni with a slower dipper, and more recently in the 2019 final, he broke their hearts with a sequence of five 140-plus-kph yorkers and a deadly slower ball. Malinga was also part of Mumbai Indians' six-match winning streak against CSK at Chepauk between 2011 and 2019.
But CSK now have their own Malinga, or Podi (Little) Malinga: Matheesha Pathirana. For a change, a slinger in yellow spooked the team in blue on Saturday - Pathirana bowled the 13th, 15th, 18th and the 20th overs for just 15 runs and three wickets.
Of those, the wicket of Nehal Wadhera, who was the only half-centurion in the game, is a bonafide contender for ball of the tournament. The thing about Pathirana is that even if you sight a yorker from his side-arm action or expect it, it's incredibly hard to get it away. Expecting a yorker, Wadhera jumped across off for a scoop over short fine-leg, but Pathirana still pinged the base of middle stump. Bowling from over the wicket, he swerved the yorker into the left-hander against the natural angle and got it to dip so sharply at 146kph that Wadhera missed it altogether.
The low-arm action is Pathirana's USP. After the game, Wadhera admitted that it was hard to pick that action. Pathirana's own team-mate at CSK, Devon Conway, doesn't face him at the nets. Ruturaj Gaikwad revealed that he has faced only "10-12 balls" from Pathirana in the nets over the past two seasons.
A split-screen on the broadcast indicated that Pathirana's release point is lower than that of Malinga's, and it's also lower than that of Nuwan Thushara, another slinger from Sri Lanka, who has played in the PSL.
But it's not about the action alone. For someone who is yet to feature in a full IPL season, Pathirana has remarkable control over his variations, which includes the on-pace bouncer as well as the slower bouncer. This is why Dhoni backloads Pathirana's overs for the death.
Despite having missed CSK's first four games of the season, Pathirana has the most wickets at the death (between overs 17 and 20), with ten strikes in seven games. His economy rate of 7.80 is also the best among bowlers who have bowled at least 50 balls during this phase in IPL 2023.
"People who don't have very clean [conventional] action, batsmen find it difficult to pick them - in a format like this, where you have to go after the bowler, it makes it slightly difficult," Dhoni said of Pathirana after the game on the official broadcast. "That is just on the action part, we are not talking about the pace that he bowls [at], the variations he has, and the consistency he has got. All of it makes him special."
Pathirana often generates skiddy pace and can even crank it up to speeds north of 145kph. He touched 150kph on Saturday and beat Jofra Archer for pace, drawing an inside edge to deep square-leg. The high pace has also added a potent point of difference to his bowling, according to Gaikwad.
"In the nets, I was like, 'I don't want to face him' because obviously he is tough to pick and [it's] tough to judge the length of the ball," Gaikwad said. "First thing is you're finding where it is coming from and second thing is judging the length and judging the line, so you're always slightly late when facing him and thankfully he is in our team."
Two balls after that searing delivery to Archer, Pathirana slowed it down to 135kph, an offcutter, against Tristan Stubbs and had Stubbs holing out. He then closed out the innings with two on-pace yorkers, limiting a line-up that had just mowed down 200-plus totals in back-to-back games to 139 for 8.
R Ashwin had revealed on his YouTube channel that the OG slinger Malinga, who is currently Rajasthan Royals' fast-bowling coach, was disappointed at Pathirana ditching his yorker for the slower bouncer when he had square leg inside the circle, with two runs to defend off the last ball against Punjab Kings last Sunday. In less than a week, Pathirana nailed all his variations and has even impressed Malinga with his progress.