Feel extremely happy in my own cocoon: Ashwin

Most five-wicket hauls in India

AHMEDABAD: By his standards, R Ashwin was having a quiet Test series against Australia. Used to picking lots of wickets when playing at home, the first three games of the Border-Gavaskar series had seen the offspinner claim just three threewicket hauls and one fifer.

Coming into the fourth Test, the bowlers were left with the challenge of dealing with a lifeless track. As to how slow it was could be made out from how Usman Khawaja was negotiating the spinners. On way to his stoic 180, the left-hand batter had so much time that he would go back, open his body and play the ball right in front of the stumps. But Ashwin also proved to be equal to the challenge. He took the opportunity to showcase his ability to purchase wickets in tough conditions by out-thinking the batters.

At one stage when Khawaja and Cameron Green got together for a partnership of 208, it looked like Australia would bat India out of the game. The ace-off-spinner, however, has kept India in the match with a stellar effort of 47.2-15-91-6. It is his 26th five-wicket haul (32nd overall), which is the most by a bowler in India and he also leapfrogged Anil Kumble to become the highest wicket-taker in the Border Gavaskar Trophy with 113 scalps.

The pressure was on the

R ASHWIN

R Ashwin

Anil Kumble hosts after a fruitless first session as Khawaja and Green went unbeaten at lunch with scores of 150 and 95 respectively. Ashwin, however, provided the much-needed breakthrough of Green with the team score on 378. Because the ball was not turning, he was tossing the ball up and looking to deceive the batters in the air.

Green took the bait when he went for a sweep shot to a tossed-up ball that was going down the leg side but the length was shorter and the batter got into the shot early and gloved a catch to keeper KS Bharat. In the same over, he had the wicket of Alex Carey and within nine runs he sent back Mitchel Starc.

After getting rewarded for bowling well, Ashwin said he can go to bed happy.

“You can go to bed feeling a lot better instead of having just three wickets in your kitty,” said Ashwin. Talking about his plan against Green, he said: “Even while bowling to Green, I felt he was playing a lot besides the line for everything and the wicket wasn’t true enough for him to play against the spin constantly, it was an idea to shut him down as his head falls over a lot more. That was the plan, but not necessarily the way you want to get him out. However, it did pan out. Sometimes the numbers speak easily for the bowler and I feel completely happy in my own cocoon about how the ball has been coming out of my hand.”

Harbhajan

Singh

Kapil Dev

Ravindra

Jadeja