Tharindu Kaushal's charismatic inception

Mohammad Hafeez, playing Tharindu Kaushal for the first time in a match, offered a genial handshake, but the ball that got him out leant in for the kiss on both cheeks. Hafeez was back in his crease, prodding at what he thought would be a regulation offbreak. The ball pounced at the wickets instead, took the inside half of the bat, then wriggled onto leg stump.

Sri Lanka has not witnessed a five-for from this kind of spin in Tests for a while. Rangana Herath has been a weaver of webs, a quick-witted conjurer, a subtle illusionist. Kaushal's is rockstar spin, dipping suddenly, gripping both pitch and spectator. He's an offspinner bowling to right-handers, and it is the inside-edge that he's beating. Asad Shafiq was caught dead in front, the ball quickening to beat his on-side swipe. Misbah was run out, but he might not have been if it had been his bat that made contact with the ball, instead of his front pad.

Soon, with a scare in the Pakistan dressing room, even Kaushal's poor balls were were being mishit. The full tosses were poked to infielders. The sweeps found the men in the deep. Pakistan had prepared for Herath. They had picked his plots apart in Galle. But now, faced with charisma rather than control, maybe they panicked. They did so well to avoid the rip current, only to be eaten by a shark.

Herath, meanwhile, whom his captain had bowled, and bowled and bowled in 2014, until the cartilage in his knees resembled the consistency of his teammates' batting, was needed only for a few waddling chases around the outfield. He is an odd choice for a specialist fielder, but given his work rate over the last few years, Herath deserves more mellow days such as this.

If he and Kaushal play together more often, there will be other days when Herath is required to pinch the flow of runs. For all the revs and talent, Kaushal still sends down loose deliveries in abundance, which is why his international debut had been delayed, despite him making a Test squad back in 2012.

"When I was picked in 2012, I didn't have that much experience," Kaushal said after stumps on the first day. "I'd only played one club season. Now that I've played three, I know a bit more of what cricket is about at a high level. I'm very happy about the five wickets."

Hafeez' dismissal brought a leap and pumping fists from Kaushal, perhaps because his first wicket in this Test came so much easier than his first ever scalp, on debut. In the Boxing Day Test last year, Brendon McCullum had smeared Kaushal around Hagley Oval before succumbing to him in sight of a double ton. Yet, even on that day Kaushal suggested he was the kind of bowler who could turn Tests in an afternoon. McCullum had bludgeoned him relentlessly. His first 14 international overs had cost 104 runs. Still the ball was being thrown up on the green surface. McCullum's slow-burn triple hundred had cemented his coming-of-age as a batsman. Kaushal was still too raw to know any route but attack.

Smelling blood at the P Sara, Kaushal went on the hunt for a big haul, cleaning up the lower order that had set the Galle Test ablaze. Sarfraz Ahmed was cajoled into a booming drive following a series of sweeps, but the floating ball dived and jived, collected his inside edge, then popped up off the pad to slip. Wahab Riaz tried the sweep, but was out to a ball that slipped beneath his shot. Yasir Shah holed out, mishitting a doosra to Kumar Sangakkara, who has been pushing for Kaushal's Test inclusion for at least a year.

That Kaushal even ventures in the doosra at a time unorthodox spinners are being tracked down, tagged, and kept in domestic captivity, says something about his self-belief. As a wrist-spinning offbreak bowler, he is probably in a subset of two. In a steel and plaster brace, Muttiah Muralitharan did prove after all that the doosra could be delivered with nearly zero degrees of flexion, much less than the allowed 15.

"Murali aiya was my favourite bowler," Kaushal said, confirming the suspicion almost anyone who has watched him bowl would arrive at. "My run-up is not like his, but I like his bowling. The turn he got and the doosra he bowled - maybe it's because I saw him that I learned something similar. My biggest hope was to bowl well at this level. I performed in club cricket, but this was where I really wanted to make an impact."

He will not have five-wicket hauls come so easily in the time to come. Batsmen will study him. They will learn the shapes his fingers make, and formulate plans to unsettle him. But for now, it's nice to know Sri Lanka continues to produce players like him. It's nice to know cricket heresy lives on.