India sealed the ongoing Test series against England at Ranchi in style by winning the fourth Test by a margin of five wickets. However, the victory was not an easy one as the visitors held the upper hand till they started their second innings after gaining a lead of 46 runs. Conventional wisdom suggested that England would try to consolidate their position and post a match winning total. But all dreams that they had entertained in this regard were destroyed by Ravichandran Ashwin, who ran through their entire top order to leave them so badly that they were dismissed for a paltry score of 145 in the second innings. After this, Indian victory was a mere formality though the hosts had to survive some tense moments before crossing the finishing line.
There was some amount of poetic justice in the fact that Ashwin was the man of the moment when India gained a stranglehold over the proceedings at Ranchi. He had crossed the landmark of 500 Test wickets during the third match at Rajkot, where he also showed the strength of character by rushing to the side of his ailing mother when the game was in progress. That he returned to take part in that Test and in the one that followed stands as testimony for his commitment towards the game and pride at donning the national colours.
Ashwin is the first player to gain entry into the national squad through the Indian Premier League (IPL) route. He started as an opening batsman and even played for India Under-17 team in this capacity. He also tried his hand as a medium-pacer before finally switching over to bowling off-spin, where he met with instant success. Though he made his first-class debut for his home state Tamil Nadu in 2006, his career did not really take off until three years later, when a call from Chennai Super Kings (CSK) changed his fortunes for the better. He caught the eyes of Krishnamachari Srikkanth, then chief selector, and Mahendra Singh Dhoni, skipper of the national side, who were both associated with this IPL franchisee. Two good seasons for CSK in IPL in 2009 and 2010, where his economical spells impressed one and all, earned a call to the national side.
Initially, Ashwin’s style of bowling was considered to be best suited for the limited overs version of the game. He played his first One-Day International (ODI) against Sri Lanka at Harare in June, 2010, and soon turned out for the country in T20 Internationals as well. He was a member of the squad that lifted the International Cricket Council World Cup in 2011, though he played only in a couple of matches. He established himself as a regular member of the playing eleven after this championship and soon became a top wicket-taker. This development prompted the selectors and team management to take a fresh look about how his abilities should be utilised. ‘
It was following this rethink that Ashwin was pitchforked into the world of Test cricket, which happened when the West Indies toured India in 2011. He lost no time in demonstrating his mettle in this version by picking up 6/47 in the second innings of his first Test. A match performance of 9/128 ensured that he was chosen as the Player of the Match as well. Ashwin soon proved that this was not a one off performance by taking nine five-wicket hauls in his first 16 Tests!
There was no looking back after this explosive start as Ashwin became the “go-to” bowler of captains for running through opposing sides. He rose in stature quickly and soon replaced Harbhajan Singh as India’s frontline spin bowler. Records fell by the wayside as he started taking wickets by the dozen in Test matches. He became the fastest bowler in history to reach the landmark of 300 Test wickets and he was second only to Muttiah Muralitharan in the speed with which he touched the 400 landmark. After scaling the next peak of 500 wickets, he stands behind only Anil Kumble with respect to total number of victims in Tests amongst Indian cricketers and is ranked at ninth place in the all time list of highest wicket-takers.
Ashwin possesses all the weapons in the repertoire of an off-spinner and uses his exceptional control over off breaks to good effect. Despite his height (he is 6 foot and 2 inches), he flights the ball and uses the variations in flight to keep the batsmen guessing. He has a mean arm ball and even bowls leg breaks and googlies. One interesting innovation that he brought to international cricket is the “carrom ball”, which is an improvement of the “soduku ball”, a finger flicked leg break used in tennis ball cricket played in streets of Chennai. One delivery of off-spin bowlers that he desists from bowling is the “doosra”, as he feels that he will not be able to bend and extend his arm quickly enough.
A graduate in Information Technology from SSN College of Engineering, Ashwin follows the rich tradition of academically brilliant world class spin bowlers from South India. Erapalli Prasanna, Srinivas Venkataraghavan and Anil Kumble were also qualified engineers who used their considerable intellect not only to outfox the batsmen but also to sharpen their skills as bowlers. Ashwin belongs to the same category as these stalwarts and can be accurately termed as a bowler who has used his brain to effectively to catapult himself to the top of the world rankings.
It should not be forgotten at this juncture that Ashwin has done justice to his talents as a batsman too. He has five centuries and 14 fifties under his belt in Tests and has scored more than 3,300 runs so far, which makes him eligible for being given the tag of an all-rounder. It must be admitted that there were only few occasions when he was required to bring out his skills as a willow-wielder, which worked against accumulating more runs against his name. But he has risen to the task whenever the situation demanded, as happened during the third Test of the series against Australia a Sydney in 2021 when he and an injured Hanuma Vihari stuck around gamely and survived a charged up Aussie attack for 42 overs to help India to save the match. He is also a safe fielder in the deep.
One criticism that Ashwin had to face almost throughout his career relates to his inability to win matches outside India. He has played 59 Tests at home and 40 abroad, but out of his 507 wickets only 153 have come on pitches abroad. His strike rate, which is 46.62 in India drops to 62.16 outside the country. Out of the 35 instances when he has taken more than 5 wickets in an innings, only 8 are in grounds abroad. Further, 6 out of his 8 match hauls of 10 wickets and above have come in India. Thus, it is evident that while he is an acknowledged match-winner in India, his abilities in this regard take a beating when playing outside India. In this respect, he stands a perch or two below Prasanna and Venkataraghavan, two great off-spinners of the yore, who could run through sides and win matches in other countries as well.
In a column written after Ashwin touched the landmark of 500 Test wickets, Sunil Gavaskar observed that the off-spinner should have been rewarded with captaincy of the national side two years ago. This brings forth the question as to why he was not considered for being appointed as skipper. There is no doubt that he possesses an excellent cricketing brain, commands the respect of his teammates and has all the attributes of a good leader, besides having powerful backers in Board of Control for Cricket in India. The only ostensible reason could be his poor performances while playing outside the country, on account of which he was not considered an automatic choice in the playing eleven while on tour. Had he been able to solve the riddle that rendered him relatively less effective while touring, he would have led the country for at least a couple of seasons.
At 37, Ashwin’s best years are behind him. But his pride in his craft coupled with the determination and zeal to perform ensure that he stays in the reckoning whenever the selectors sit down to choose members of the national squad. It is to his credit that he has maintained peak fitness levels right through his career and contributed to the cause of the side in all matches that he played, even when he has not been at his best with the ball. He will continue to command a place in the side for matches at home so long as he retains the fire to keep playing.
Ashwin started his Test career at the rather late age of 25 years. But he has made up for this delayed start by reaching the various landmarks in double quick time. The next target on his horizon will be Kumble’s Indian record of 619 Test wickets. One can be reasonably certain that Ashwin will not let his bowling arm drop till he reaches the magic figure of 620 wickets.
The last match of the ongoing series at Dharamsala will be Ashwin’s 100 Test. This column congratulates him on reaching this landmark and joins millions of followers of the game in this country in wishing some more years of dedicated service to Indian cricket.
(The author is a former international cricket umpire and a senior bureaucrat)
