ESPNcricinfo Awards 2024 men's ODI bowling winner: Vandersay has his say

Sri Lanka hadn't won a bilateral ODI series against India since August 1997. 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.

It wasn't a classic legspinner's dismissal, but it sowed the seeds of everything that followed: Rohit caught at backward point for 64 off 44 balls, failing to keep a reverse sweep down. That wicket broke open the floodgates, and the way that ball turned and bounced also contributed to future dismissals, putting the threat of the big legbreak in the batters' minds and leaving them particularly vulnerable to the skidder.

5 Number of Sri Lanka bowlers to pick up six or more wickets in an ODI against India. The ones apart from Vandersay are Muthiah Muralidaran, Ajantha Mendis, Angelo Mathews and Akila Dananjaya .

1 The number of ODIs Sri Lanka had won against India since July 2021: this was the first.

"I think Vandersay bowled the ideal length in these conditions. In such conditions, when the ball is turning - and the way Vandersay bowled today, used his finger, and bowled stump to stump - you get these phases when there is assistance from the pitch."
- India assistant coach Abhishek Nayar

Haris Rauf
5 for 29 vs Australia, second ODI, Adelaide
Pakistan had lost 13 of their last 14 away ODIs against Australia, and they began this series with another defeat, albeit an excruciatingly close one. That they turned the series around and won 2-1 was largely down to back-to-back Player-of-the-Match efforts from Rauf. The spell that transformed the series came in Adelaide, sending Australia hurtling from 79 for 2 to 146 for 9. Few weapons in the game are as dangerous as the blindingly fast ball that angles into off stump and leaves the batter from a good length, and Rauf produced two classics of this genre to dismiss Marnus Labuschagne and Aaron Hardie on his way to his second five-wicket haul in ODIs.