Graphic: how Gul has hit the spot in the World Twenty20 competition

A whiff of MCC coaching manuals ablaze will linger this afternoon at Lord’s, the home of the game’s technical purists. The central battleground in the World Twenty20 final will be fought over by four highly unorthodox spinners who, had they been English, would never have got a county contract. It’s cricket, but not as we know it.

How Ajantha Mendis and Muttiah Muralitharan manoeuvre the ball defies simple explanation but it involves flicked fingers and whirling wrists. For Pakistan, Saeed Ajmal uses a doosra as his stock ball while Shahid Afridi bowls bouncy leg-breaks and googlies at disconcerting speed. Overall, the Pakistan pair hold the advantage, having taken 22 wickets at 12 apiece in the tournament, while the Sri Lankan pair have 20 at 12.4.

Afridi is the only one of the four who bats and if Pakistan win he might again be named player of the tournament, as he was in the inaugural event in 2007. His semi-final performance against South Africa was typically outrageous; the kiss he blew Jacques Kallis as he smashed him to all parts summed it up. I’m here to get under your skin, he was saying. He really is the cock of the walk.

To stress the diversity of skills on parade, imagine the scene 25 days from now when the next big match takes place at Lord’s, the second Ashes Test. England will probably field an orthodox off-spinner in Graeme Swann and Australia may pick no spinner at all. This may be the last chance for a while to savour the truly exotic, unless Mendis signs for a county, as well he might.

Each side also possess an extraordinary fast bowler, the sling-shot Lasith Malinga for Sri Lanka while Pakistan have perhaps the best international Twenty20 bowler there has ever been in Umar Gul. Top dog in the 2007 tournament with 13 wickets, Gul could finish in front again. Going into today’s game, he is joint top on 12 with Malinga, Ajmal and Mendis.

Gul’s talent for bowling yorkers to order is unmatched. Although he finished wicketless, his death-bowling against South Africa had Wasim Akram, a former champion one-day bowler himself, purring with delight.

If Tillakaratne Dilshan gets a start, Younis Khan may have to summon Gul, whom he likes to hold back, early. Dilshan, rivalling Gul and Afridi as star of the tournament, has proved easily the hardest batsman to bowl to. Statistically, he stands alone: 317 runs in six innings, five scores of 45-plus and 49 boundaries from 214 balls faced.

There isn’t much here from the coaching manuals either. Dilshan has hit three times as many boundaries between third man and fine leg, including his trademark over-the-head scoop, as he has between mid-on and mid-off, while he pummels the rope behind backward point. He has struck 41% of his side’s boundaries and 35% of their runs.

Gul says yorkers, bouncers and slower balls make up the magical mix that works in Twenty20 and he has proved his point. Younis Khan began using him as first change but after three games realised that the ball, once severely roughened up, might do even more for him. Since then, Gul has come on in the 12th, 13th and 14th overs.

After Gul had taken five wickets in the first of these games, New Zealand’s Daniel Vettori, who is easily the grumpiest captain, said he had never before seen a bowler reverse swing the ball in Twenty20, triggering media speculation that Vettori was alleging ball-tampering. Match officials were uninterested.

The key to reverse swing is fullness of length and Gul does bowl a very full length, an art he says he learnt from studying videos of Wasim and Waqar Younis. Malinga, who also swings his fuller deliveries, has similarly fared better the later he has come on.