Kamindu Mendis, who shone for Sri Lanka with consistent batting displays in the year gone by, has been named as the ICC Men’s Emerging Cricketer of the Year.
Mendis, who scored 1451 runs across formats at an average just above 50, rubbed shoulders with some of the greats of the game in 2024.
The flamboyant left-handed batter had made just a solitary Test appearance for Sri Lanka prior to 2024, but ended the year having not only cemented his place as an all-format resource for Sri Lanka but also becoming their go-to-player in moments of crises and when the stakes were high.
This was on the show during Sri Lanka’s push for a maiden ICC World Test Championship Final spot as the 26-year-old delivered a streak of big scores in the whites.
Slotting in the middle-order, Mendis was one of the six batters who scored over 1000 Test runs in the recently concluded calendar year – averaging the highest among them.
Making the most of his starts, Mendis hit five centuries and three fifties in his staggering tally of runs, taking Sri Lanka home on multiple occasions.
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