Pathum Nissanka doesn't have the long levers so vaunted for hitting sixes. He is all of five feet six, with appropriately-sized limbs for a man his height. But on the fifth ball of the 17th over during his century against Australia, he gave himself longer levers. As he shaped to play Nathan Ellis, he dropped his bat through his hands and held it - unusually - near the top of the handle. His bottom hand acting as a fulcrum, the top hand guiding the shot, he flicked the ball effortlessly over fine leg. It cleared the close-in fielder easily. Though he seemed to have barely touched it, the ball carried all the way for six.
Finding a way is just what Nissanka tends to do. What he has done since his cricketing life began, and what he has not stopped doing since breaking through into the national team. Nissanka has emerged during Sri Lanka's long decline, an era in which Sri Lanka fans have expected less and less of their men's team with each World Cup. And yet, Nissanka has never stopped adapting, evolving, his own batting better this year than the last, and that year better than the year before. Marked improvements to his pull shot and back-foot punch are so 2025. The change-grip-and-whip-over-fine-leg is what's in this season.
There's also a mean reverse spank now, as Cooper Connolly discovered. In the fifth over against Australia, Nissanka had switched his stance and crashed the left-arm spinner high over deep third for six. Nissanka said after his 100 not out off 52 that this was his favourite shot of the night, wearing a mischievous grin and a glint in his eye like a four-year-old with a new toy. It feels more like a fun-shaped stick from the park than a cheap plastic car - a toy whose enjoyment will be defined by Nissanka's own imagination.
The timing he has always had. From Nissanka's very first international iteration - as a talented but limited 23-year-old with an outstanding first-class record - the ball used to leap gleefully off his bat even when he defended, where it used to lumber off the pitch for others. This rapid hand speed was perhaps the first layer of his cricket, which his father, a groundsman from the western town of Kalutara, had known since he first handed his son a bat and set him off on this trajectory. The supple wrists, which spice Nissanka shots square of the wicket with delicious little flicks and swishes, have also long been a feature.
He is beloved by coaches too, because a) he learns quickly, and b) he's a good boy who works hard. In the decade since the last great clutch of Sri Lanka batters retired, other blinding talents had emerged, but they have fizzled, their stars not burning quite as bright or quite as long as had been hoped.
With Nissanka, you dare to hope, primarily because of the distance he has already travelled. His first international coach wouldn't stop talking Nissanka up, but even Mickey Arthur felt Nissanka had his limits. "I'm loving what I'm seeing of Pathum Nissanka at the moment," Arthur had said in April 2021, a month after Nissanka made his debut. "He'll carry Sri Lankan cricket forward - certainly in Test cricket, and he'll play a massive role in one-day cricket. How he develops his T20 cricket, time will tell." On Monday, Nissanka became the first Sri Lanka batter to hit two T20I hundreds. His first had been a 107 off 58 against India. He'd also hit an ODI double at Pallekele, but that was two years ago - a Nissanka that is already way in the rear view.
He is now, at 27, bringing the kind of joy to Sri Lankan crowds that they had so craved for a dozen years. Where Kamindu Mendis has reserved his best for Tests, Nissanka is the across-formats hit, bringing the best of his Test format to T20s and vice versa - his T20 batting shimmering with delicate deflections behind the wicket, his Test batting so aggressive now he blasts Sri Lanka to victories with better than a-run-a-ball knocks at venues such as The Oval. Sri Lankan batters of the last 12 years have just not ridden the skill escalator this steadily. Where even the highest rated of the others have had difficult baptisms, early-career regressions, runless stretches, their techniques worked out and chewed up in the maws of modern international cricket, Nissanka has never been less than formidable. If oppositions have found it difficult to paint a target on his back, it is because the man has never really stopped moving, a back injury that forced him out of the Test team the closest he ever came to stasis. Even through that spell, there were limited-overs gems.
It is possible that Nissanka is on the cusp of a new level entirely. He is having his first global moment at this World Cup, that high-quality hundred having been followed by a 62 off 41 against Zimbabwe. The act that most thrilled an international audience, however, is that catch off Glenn Maxwell, Nissanka pulling off at backward point a little masterpiece of anticipation, timing, hand-eye coordination, and athleticism, some of which are also raw materials of his batting.
When such catches are taken in full Sri Lankan grounds, there is a moment when the papare music pealing from the stands is heard with perfect clarity, an otherwise boisterous audience having no choice but to draw breath in awe. Nissanka has cut through the noise of Sri Lankan cricket. And around the country, fans are becoming enraptured by a young batter in ways they have not in years.