The many moods of Sunil Narine: Knight Narine celebrates one of his 22 wickets; skipper Gautam Gambhir joins in; with a giant mystery ball in the nets; getting a trademark SRK hug

The first thing that strikes one about Sunil Narine is his intricate hairstyle. It’s a Mohawk, but unlike the classic Beckham Mohawk, it’s like two waves crashing into each other before curling back, atop the spinning sensation’s head. It looks the same every day, and the simplicity of the style does not take away from the expertise required to get it right, time after time.

Like his bowling. Simple, but as the last six weeks have proved, not easy to execute for him and not easy to play for the batsmen. There have been mystery spinners in the recent past, but what sets Sunil Narine apart is his accuracy, and the fact that he is very difficult to pick off the hand.

The Indian cricket team played Sunil Narine last year, and before the 2012 auction, he was part of the plans of the KKR think tank. When Gautam Gambhir heard Sunil’s name, he endorsed the view that he was indeed special. The KKR captain said even Indian batsmen, consummate players of spin, had found him difficult to pick.

At the auction, Team KKR was very fortunate to get him, and it’s significant that the other team eager to pick him was the Mumbai Indians. Possibly, he had also caught the eye of some of the Indian players in the Mumbai team last year. As it turned out, Calcutta outbid Mumbai at the auction, and the wheel turned full circle last week when Sunil Narine bowled a match-winning spell against Mumbai on their home turf (Wankhede stadium).

In many ways, Sunil Narine’s success is also a sign of how the IPL has developed over the last five years. KKR had picked another mystery spinner, Ajantha Mendis, in IPL 1. He came midway through the season and played just a game or two in the 2008 season. The thinking at the time was that the internationals needed to be proven performers and a rookie spinner, however hard to read in the nets, was a bit of a risk.

In 2009, the IPL was played in South Africa, and those conditions were not ideal for young Mendis. It was a season where KKR had losses aplenty, but it was considered high-risk to play Mendis after he was tonked by Yusuf Pathan in a super over against Rajasthan Royals. Mendis went on to set a record by reaching 50 wickets for Sri Lanka in the least number of ODIs. He flattened India in an Asia Cup final, and who knows what might have happened if he had played IPL 1 when he was an unknown quantity!

Today, captains and coaches in the IPL are more unafraid to play inexperienced internationals, and it’s often an advantage. In the age of video analysis, being an unknown quantity is a bonus, and to Sunil’s credit, he has been deadly accurate, calm under pressure and nobody has got the measure of him just yet.

The world will now dissect Sunil’s bowling and with time, get some measure of comfort playing him. But this calm, implacable youngster seems to have it in him to stay ahead of the batsmen. It promises to be a fascinating game of cat and mouse where Sunil will need to outsmart the best batsmen in the world if he needs to keep weaving magic, both for the West Indies as well as for KKR.

The good news is that KKR need not worry about reading him — the Mohawked assassin is with us for one more season. At least!

Sunil Narine who?

Full name: Sunil Philip Narine.

Date and place of birth: May 26, 1988, Trinidad.

Major teams represented: West Indies, Trinidad & Tobago, Kolkata Knight Riders.

Bowling style: Right-arm offbreak.

Batting style: Left-hand bat.

First break: Narine caught the selectors’ eye by claiming all 10 wickets in a trial match and made the Trinidad & Tobago squad in January 2009. He was later picked for the inaugural Champions League Twenty20 tournament in India in 2009 and made his ODI debut in the India-West Indies match on December 5, 2011 in Ahmedabad.

The mystery ball: Sunil Gavaskar called him the “mystery bowler” at the start of IPL 5. Why? Well, earlier this month, The Independent, UK, wrote: “Despite the ridiculous Mohawk,

23-year-old Trinidadian Sunil Narine is dazzling the IPL…. An

off-spinner who took all 10 wickets in a trial game, he bowls at least two other deliveries, one a conventional

leg-break, and the other christened by him as a ‘knuckle-ball’.

“Narine’s knuckle-ball turns like a leg-break, comes out of the front of the hand, and is achieved through a prodigious flick of both index and middle finger.... Narine’s delivery looks... one of the hardest of all alleged ‘mystery balls’ to deliver. The strength of his digits must be exceptional.”

Action alert: Doubts were raised over his bowling action during the Caribbean T20 in 2011 and he worked with bio-mechanical experts at the University of Western Australia in Perth to set things right. He came back even more mysterious — claiming 10 wickets at an economy rate of 4.37 in Champions League 2011!

IPL auction 2012: KKR bid $700,000 (Rs 3.8 crore at the current exchange rate) for him in 2012.

IPL 5: He is now the second-highest wicket taker (22 in 13 matches). He has the best economy rate at 5.14.

Is Sunil Narine the best bowler of IPL 5? Tell t2@abp.in