Video: watch Mendis in action

What is at the heart of a great story? Narrative and character are usually a good place to start. A storyline, perhaps, that weaves through unpromising beginnings to a triumphant end with a little-known character possessed of a touch of mystery? If that is what you want, read on because a great narrative is unfolding right now in Sri Lanka, where Ajantha Mendis is the latest to join an exclusive club whose members have included Bernard Bosanquet, Sonny Ramadhin, Johnny Gleeson and Jack Iverson. Mendis, who starts his second Test match today, is the latest incarnation of the Mystery Spinner.

He is certainly a mystery to India's batsmen, who were bamboozled, flummoxed, befuddled and bewildered by him first in the Asia Cup final earlier this month, when he took six for 13, and then in last week's Test match, in which he took eight for 132, the best match figures by a Sri Lanka bowler on debut. The week after Monty Panesar and Paul Harris wheeled away for England and South Africa, stock ball after stock ball, unimaginative over after unimaginative over, Mendis and Muttiah Muralitharan flicked their fingers and rotated their wrists to such effect that they took 19 of the 20 wickets to fall. And this against batsmen who were breastfed on spin.

For those who have not seen Mendis in action, he stands at the end of his run, twirling the ball in his fingers just as any common-as-muck off spinner would. That is where the similarity ends. He then grips the ball like a seam bowler in the tips of his fingers, as if he is holding a precious relic, runs in quickly and bowls at a quickish pace. As his non-bowling hand reaches upwards just before delivery, the index finger on that hand points skywards as if in premonition that the umpire is about to give the batsman out. So far, the umpires have responded with bewildering regularity.

On release, the mystery unfolds. He lays claim to more deliveries than an NHS midwife, a mixture of off spinners, leg spinners, googlies, flippers and a ball that is flicked out somewhere between the thumb and second finger. None of India's batsmen could pick him. Mendis, 23, says he has five variations and is working on a sixth. This may be true, or may reflect that he has learnt a trick or two from Shane Warne, who began every Ashes series with the claim that he had developed a “new” delivery when, in fact, the older he got the fewer he had at his command.

This variety is accompanied by unerring accuracy. Basically, whatever ball Mendis bowls, he bowls at the stumps. This might sound like a Pythonesque statement of the obvious, but it is an important factor in his success. Today's umpires are much more likely to give batsmen out leg-before on the front foot, which forces them to play with bat rather than pad. As a result of the batsman being unable to play with his pad on the line of the ball, a spinner does not have to spin the ball hugely to take either edge. And Mendis, for all his variations, is not as big a spinner of the ball as, say, Muralitharan.

Every time Mendis fools a batsman - which is often - he does so with the ghosts of Bosanquet, Iverson, Gleeson and Ramadhin looking on proudly. Are there common themes that bind these strange creatures together? Mystery is an obvious prerequisite.

Bosanquet, of course, was the Englishman who invented the googly after years of playing a game called twisti-twosti, in which he would spin a tennis ball across a table in such a way as to fool his opponents. Iverson, Gleeson and Ramadhin all flicked the ball, one way or another, from the finger much as Mendis does now. This flicked ball has recently been christened the “carrom ball” because it resembles the way carrom players flick their disks on to a carrom board.

Such finger-flicking ability requires enormously strong digits, something Mendis seems to share especially with Iverson, whose fingers and hands were so big and strong, according to the Australian's biographer, Gideon Haigh, that the ball settled into his grip “like a marble for squirting”. Gleeson attributed his finger strength to his upbringing in the Australian outback, where he spent much of his time milking cows. Did Ramadhin's finger strength come from his enthusiasm for motor mechanics?

These men of mystery often started bowling late in life, were self-taught and had little formal coaching. Ramadhin did not bowl at school and only began to at all because, at 5ft 4in, he was not big enough to get a regular go as a batsman at his club.

Gleeson has been quoted as saying that he learnt his bag of tricks playing “backyard cricket with a jacaranda tree as the wicket”. Iverson bowled fast at school and then did not bowl for 12 years, until he began experimenting with a ball during army service in Papua New Guinea.

Mendis shares an army background with Iverson, having been trained as a gunner (let's hope his finger strength does not come from pulling the trigger) in the artillery. He began bowling early enough, but, crucially, was left to develop without the interference of coaches. Sri Lankan cricket has often looked chaotic from the outside, but chaos can be a good thing in cricket, especially if unorthodoxy rather than rigid conformity is encouraged. Would Lasith Malinga, he of the low, slingy action, have been left alone had he been English? Would Mendis have been allowed to develop in such a free-spirited way in England? I doubt it.

Instant success is another common theme: Bosanquet took 16 wickets in his first three Tests against Australia; Ramadhin came to England in 1950 and took 135 wickets for the West Indians at 14.88 and Iverson played five Tests against England in 1950-51, taking 21 wickets at 15.23. Mendis's own career to date has been startling: in his first two years in first-class cricket, he has taken 119 wickets at 14.68. But then this success is often short-lived.

This is unsurprising, perhaps. Word gets around, tactics are discussed (unless, as the story goes with Gleeson, you are Geoff Boycott and refuse to share the secret with your team-mates) and the mystery is gradually unravelled. Gleeson eventually took on a more defensive, stock bowler's role. Iverson did not play much after 1951 and ended up committing suicide. Peter May and Colin Cowdrey administered their own form of death to Ramadhin in 1957 by using their pads, something that could not happen today.

But now, of course, the mystery men are even more disadvantaged by television and the use of slow-motion replays making that which is mysterious seem mundane. Either that, or batsmen come to realise what Gleeson admitted in typical Aussie fashion when asked about his five types of ball. “That's bullshit,” he said. “You can only do three things: spin it from the leg, spin it from the off or go on straight.”

After Mendis's startling success against India, he has been twice promoted in the army, first to sergeant and then to second lieutenant. The question is where will he end up: as commander-in-chief or back in the ranks? Watching Panesar and Harris take all the mystery out of spin, let us hope his mystery is not unravelled and his success is long-lasting. But if the historical antecedents are anything to go by, we should enjoy him while we can.