Follow UsIt has not been a memorable Indian Premier League (IPL) debut for Kusal Mendis. He first dropped a couple of catches behind the wickets that let the Mumbai Indians (MI) in the IPL 2025 Eliminator off the hook. Just when it looked like he would redeem himself with the bat, he was dismissed in one of the most bizarre fashions.
Facing Mitchell Santner, Mendis pulled a shortish delivery to deep mid-wicket. In doing so, his back foot crashed into the wickets. Thereby, he became the first player to be dismissed hit-wicket on IPL debut, and also the first-ever player to be out in this fashion in a playoff match. It looked as though his back foot slipped and went on to the wickets.
This is the 18th hit-wicket dismissal in IPL history, and six of them have come against MI. The Sri Lankan batter also became the third batter to be dismissed like this in IPL 2025 after Abhinav Manohar and Krunal Pandya.
The only season where three batters were out hit-wicket was in 2016, when Yuvraj Singh, Deepak Hooda and David Warner knocked over the stumps.
Mendis was dismissed for a 10-ball 20, which included a four and a couple of sixes. He put on 64 off 34 deliveries for the second wicket with Sai Sudharsan to resurrect the Gujarat Titans (GT) innings after skipper Shubman Gill was dismissed in the first over.
GT have been set a target of 229 to win the match and stay alive in IPL 2025.