Shashini Gimhani - the ambidextrous teenage bowler who honed her skills on same beach as Lasith Malinga

Asia Cup champions have their youngest ever T20I player in their ranks for Women’s T20 World Cup in the UAE

A photo sequence of Shashini Gimhani bowling during practice for the Sri Lanka national team. Scroll through the gallery for her complete bowling action. Antonie Robertson / The National

Antonie Robertson / The National

Antonie Robertson / The National

Antonie Robertson / The National

Antonie Robertson / The National

Antonie Robertson / The National

Antonie Robertson / The National

Antonie Robertson / The National

The small fishing village of Rathgama on Sri Lanka’s south-west coast has already delivered one unlikely star for world cricket. At the Women’s T20 World Cup in the UAE this month, another could be set to follow in the footsteps of Lasith Malinga onto the global stage.

Aged 15 and just starting out in the international game, it remains to be seen just where Shashini Gimhani might reach in cricket. What is certain, though, is she has so many points of difference that she makes Malinga look positively conventional.

Malinga, the former Sri Lanka fast bowler, famously developed his side-arm, slingy mode of bowling fast by using a singed tennis ball in games of beach cricket on the sand of Rathgama. He lived 60 yards from the beach when he was growing up.

Gimhani lives even closer to the same stretch of sand and also learnt the sport playing matches with boys there while she was growing up.

Although it is misleading to imply that she is already all grown up. She does not turn 16 until December. She is missing school to play at the World Cup and will be sitting her GCSEs at the start of next year.

Shashini Gimhani has drawn comparisons to former South Africa bowler Paul Adams for her bowling technique. Antonie Robertson / The National

Like Malinga, she formulated a strategy to get wickets on the beach. It led her to develop a quirky method as a left-arm wrist-spinner, with an action which bears a noticeable resemblance to that of the former South Africa slow bowler Paul Adams.

What is unique is the fact she can do precisely the same thing with her right arm, too. Her ambidextrousness was encouraged after she asked to join her school’s girls’ team for hard-ball cricket matches.

“Because he saw I could throw with both arms, my schoolteacher suggested I try bowling right arm as well,” Gimhani said.

Having become Sri Lanka’s youngest ever T20 international player aged 15 and 144 days earlier this year, she has yet to bowl with both arms in a full international game. But she did do it at Under 19 level.

Whether she does so in the World Cup, which starts with a double-header of matches in Sharjah on Thursday, feels unlikely. She was recruited to the side to provide a point of difference, but the side’s coaching staff are well aware she is not the finished product just yet.

“We saw this girl 13-14 months ago and we thought, ‘Wow’,” said Rumesh Ratnayake, the former Sri Lanka seam bowler who is now the head coach of their women’s national team. We called her to nets and asked her to bowl at Chamari [Athapaththu, Sri Lanka’s leading player and captain] and the best of our batters.

“We saw huge potential. [The batters] did not know what was happening. She had a big leg break. We saw potential, and we thought, ‘Can we chance her, and get her into the big team, especially with the World Cup in view?’ We have been working on that. She is only 15 years old, and it is a work in progress, but she has a lot of potential. What we realised was there was no left-arm wrist-spinner in the women’s game in the world.”

We saw huge potential. What we realised was there was no left-arm wrist-spinner in the women’s game in the world

Rumesh Ratnayake,
Sri Lanka head coach

Gimhani’s demeanor is a clue to her age. She seems acutely shy and generally converses via smiles rather than speech.

“I still haven’t heard two words from her,” Ratnayake said. “She smiles all the time, and I hope she doesn’t lose that ever, but we need her to talk and tell us how she feels when things go right, and how it feels when they go wrong.”

At least she might be slightly more forthcoming with her teammates. While training with the team in Colombo, she shares a house with four of her colleagues. She says she is trying to pull her weight around the house and has graduated to chopping onions, but leaves the cooking to her housemates.

She is grateful for how she has been received within the team. “It is not daunting at all,” she said of her elevation to the senior side. I was made to feel welcome from the start by all the players, especially Chamari. I have had a lot of support from everyone, not just on the field but off the field as well.”

On the field, she defies categorisation. If you put Kamindu Mendis, Malinga and Adams in – fittingly and figurately – a blender, at the end of it you might come out with Gimhani.

Before he went all Donald Bradman on Test cricket, setting new standards for batting, Mendis was best known for his party piece of being able to bowl with both arms.

Like Gimhani, he unveiled his talent for ambidextrous bowling at age group level first. Although she has yet to do so in a senior international, Sri Lanka’s coaching team are happy for Gimhani to persist with her unique skill.

Ratnayake shows her videos of Adams, the former Proteas left-armer whose homespun method was famously described as like a frog in a blender.

He wants her to finesse a googly, as was Adams’ main mode of delivery, to give her a variation to her stock leg break. The coach says she is three-quarters of the way there.

No other country promotes unorthodox cricketers quite so much as Sri Lanka. As well as Mendis and Malinga, the island gave the cricket world the likes of Muttiah Muralitharan and Ajantha Mendis.

There is no coaching book which teaches people to bowl off-spin like Muralitharan did with such mammoth success. And Ajantha Mendis’ main skill came not from a manual, but via the board game carrom.

Ratnayake said he does not know why his country produces quirky players with such frequency, but he does think they are savvy at letting them develop just the way they are.

“One of the first to see Malinga was me,” Ratnayake said. “I didn’t know at the start what the outcome was going to be. I didn’t know he was going to be a world-class, world-renowned bowler. We just kept him without changing him. When I left the system, I was telling the coaches, just leave him as he is. Very wisely, they did the same.

“In terms of unusual bowlers, we have had a few. The thinking is that an unusual, freakish bowler will always be a challenge for a batter.”