Ashwin six-for wraps up 197-run win

KANPUR: R Ashwin picked up his 19th fivewicket haul as India wrapped up a 197-run win in their 500th Test match. Needing six wickets at the start of the fifth day, India endured a wicketless first hour as Luke Ronchi and Mitchell Santner stretched their fifth-wicket stand to 102, but the wickets came quickly thereafter. The win arrived 43 minutes after lunch when Ashwin had Neil Wagner lbw with a carrom ball. Chasing a nominal 434, New Zealand had been bowled out for 236.

Ashwin finished with innings figures of 6 for 132 and match figures of 10 for 225 in 66.2 overs. Bowling with a callus in the middle finger of his bowling hand, he used the carrom ball frequently after lunch, possibly because he was finding it difficult to grip the offbreak. He took two wickets with it - of Wagner and Ish Sodhi, who walked across his stumps to get bowled around his legs but the big breakthrough came with a big-spinning offbreak, pitching outside Santner’s leg stump and turning across him to force an edge to gully.

It ended a hugely impressive performance from Santner, who faced 179 balls in the innings and 286 in the match in addition to bowling 55.2 overs of left-arm spin and picking up five wickets.

Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja did the bulk of the bowling, sending down all but 18 overs of New Zealand’s innings, which lasted 87.3 overs, and 134.2 of the 183.2 overs India bowled in the match. At times India’s selection of two spinners and two seamers looked questionable, but Mohammed Shami showed why he had been included by taking out two wickets in two balls in a short, sharp spell of reverse-swing - which had been in scant evidence in the match until that point - before lunch.

By the time Shami came on, bowling all those overs was beginning to have its effect on the spinners. Ronchi gifted them his wicket with a loss of concentration in the first over after drinks, but the new batsman, BJ Watling, was looking comfortable, sweeping and cutting delightfully. The sixthwicket partnership had moved to 29 when Shami measured his run-up.

Bowling around the wicket to the lefthanded Santner, he gave early warning of reverse-swing with an lbw shout off his second ball. The ball was probably doing too much and missing leg stump. The last ball of his second over was a near mirror image. Shami was bowling over the wicket to the right-handed Watling, and the ball tailed into him to pin him to the crease. Again, the ball swung appreciably, but replays suggested the ball would probably have hit some part of leg stump - umpire’s call, perhaps, had DRS been in use.