Rewind 15 days and a young bowler bamboozled probably the best batting attack in the world, an attack which defeated the mighty Aussies in their own backyard a few months back. Yuvraj Singh, Suresh Raina, Virender Sehwag and Rohit Sharma were found wanting against a freak bowler who definitely has something even computers cannot dissect. Step forward Ajantha Mendis.

Fast forward 15 days and Mendis is proposed as the biggest threat to another Indian batting attack that have nothing to prove about their capabilities. With 30,000 runs on the board Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman are definitely big fish on the Test scene.

They have faced and played them all with aplomb - Muttiah Muralitharan, Shane Warne and Saqlain Mushtaq have all been on the receiving end of the Indian masters. Warne was in the side in which Dravid and Laxman stole the game in Kolkata, Saqlain has faced the wrath many a times from the bat of Tendulkar and the memories of the Kandy defeat last time around would still be fresh in Murali’s mind.

But Mendis is special. He has five deliveries in his repertoire and is working on a sixth. But does variety assure a bowler's place among the elite? History says no, otherwise guys like John Gleeson and Jack Iverson would have been phenomena in their own right. Both had greater variety than Mendis but struggled to play 50 Tests between them.

So what makes a bowler special? It is the way he utilises variety and a stock delivery to the fullest extent and surprises batsman by using variety. That makes a bowler special. Even today Muralitharan bowls at least three of his stock deliveries per over and the rest are surprise weapons. That’s how you keep the batsman guessing.

One example of variety spelling doom would be Saqlain Mushtaq who unfortunately fell so much in love with his ‘Doosra’ - the one which went the other way - that he started bowling that delivery more than his usual stock delivery which was the orthodox off spinner. Yes, he claimed a lot of wickets using the Doosra but over-reliance on it became counter-productive. Saqlain could not even sustain three years after that though he had the potential of becoming the best off spinner in contemporary cricket.

Thus it’s not variety which makes a spinner a legend, rather it’s the use of it. Unfortunately Mendis does not have a stock delivery yet so I am not able to comprehend what his strategy will be to outfox the batsman. In an ODI chasing 280, batsmen are under pressure to hit each bowler out of the attack. But in the longer form of the game the big four of Indian cricket have seen it all and done it all. They will bide their time and then go after the novelty. So now the onus is on Mendis to be a world beater.

I am not saying that Ajantha will not succeed in Wednesday's Test against the mighty Indian batting attack but my only point of concern is whether he will be able to handle the pressure of bowling to some of the best batsmen in the world.

He has proved to be phenomenal, he showed his stuff in the final of the Asia Cup and he also has the big match temperament, but a Test series against India will extend him to the full. In this battle of wits, the stronger character will win and on paper the Indian line-up looks much stronger but do not forget that another Lankan Lion, the wily Murali is lurking.

Mendis’s sensational entry to international cricket has taken the limelight away from Murali. And he isn't the leading wicket-taker in Test history for nothing.