‘Simplifying action has paid off’
BIRMINGHAM: When R Ashwin arrived for the Test series in England, there were questions whether he would feel like he was going out of fashion. The team management had a year earlier made his finger spin redundant in limited-overs cricket.
If that wasn’t harsh, the buzz around wrist-spin, particularly Chinaman bowler Kuldeep Yadav, taking precedence over the off-spinner would have hurt India’s third-most successful Test spinner. However, Ashwin banished all those negativity by becoming the first Indian spinner in over 30 years to take the opening wicket in an England Test series, binding a paceoriented attack on a slow Edgbaston pitch, and picking three of the seven England left-handers in his 4/62. While the 31-year-old is known to constantly try to add variations to his bowling, he said shedding complexities in his approach and basic homework had helped, for a bowler seen as ineffective on major away tours.
Ashwin struck in the ninth over on the Day 1 Edgbaston pitch with some dampness early on but playing slow. He beat Alastair Cook with flight and drift, drawing him forward and knocking back off-stump.
After his four-wicket haul on Wednesday, Ashwin explained his transformation in a chat with bowling coach, Bharat Arun, on the BCCI website. He said planning began a year ago, when he played for Worcestershire.
He played four first-class games, taking 20 wickets at an average of 29.15 with two fivewicket hauls for Worcester.
“When I came here for the county stint last year, the one thing I realised was the speed at which spinners had to bowl here, the wickets are extremely slow even on the first day. You can have a bit of bounce, but if the pace is not right the batsman can get a lot of time to play off the front and back foot.
“Even over the last 12 to 18 months, I spent a lot of time playing club cricket. I have been working on simplifying my action a bit, making sure I can get more body into the ball and hence try and create something in the air, and that is what I did and it worked really well.
“We’ve have always spoken about taking the wicket out of the equation, especially how good the wickets are (in England). To a large extent doing batsmen in the air is something I have consciously worked on, but when you’re trying to do that sometimes the body just gives up, you are a touch short or fuller.
“So, in one of those pursuits I thought simplifying my action was very important. Because I went through a very good phase with a particular action, a lot of bad habits had crept in, with my arm coming in and all that.
“Those are the things I had to work, against my own will and try and tell myself I had to work on my action again.”
While Cook was beaten by flight and drift, extra revolutions that extracted more bounce was Ben Stokes’ undoing as he played back to the bowler. A quick delivery trapped Jos Buttler as well as Stuart Broad.