Ashwin mixes it up by varying speed and turn
MUMBAI: Until Ravichandran Ashwin came on to bowl the final over of his spell, the 14th of the innings, only two of his deliveries were bowled under 90kph. New Zealand were coasting at 106/1 and his first ball of that over, another quick off-spinner bowled wide outside off to the left-handed Mark Chapman, had been tonked for four. That’s when Ashwin came slightly wide of the crease, floated one up, got some bite off the surface. It beat Chapman’s swipe and the outside edge to disturb the zing bails.
Ashwin bowled that delivery at 84kph, his second slowest of the game till then, for two reasons. He seemed to have thought that it’s a variation that could catch the batter unawares; he may also have surmised that the game situation demanded that. It could also be that the just-changed ball gave him the confidence that it was dry enough to land exactly where he wanted it to.
Ashwin bowls these deliveries for a living in Test cricket and we will see that in the Tests to follow. But he’s clear in his mind. T20 cricket does not allow a spinner to go chasing wickets by flighting the ball.
A lot of the commentary around spin bowling in T20 cricket where experts encourage spinners to be more attacking does not cut ice with Ashwin. With the new batter Glenn Phillips in, he followed it up with a slower ball that went away. Another slower ball, this time an off-spinner, followed. Then came the sucker ball—a sharp carrom ball that saw Philips dismissed leg before to the delight of the Jaipur crowd. It was a four-run over that produced two wickets. Ashwin’s spell read 4-23-2. New Zealand were pushed back to 110/3 before the death overs and India got their nose in front in the contest.
It’s not that Ashwin could not have tried to be braver in his first three overs. Celebrating his 50th T20I, we know what he’s capable of. But you only have to go back to his comments made during the T20 World Cup to understand why he believes in the value of a dot ball in this format. Even for a naturally attacking spinner like him.
“I cannot shirk my responsibility of bowling dot balls or bowling economically, but in the process, if I’m getting wickets, I’m getting wickets. I also need to keep in mind what the team expects from me at that particular ball,” he had said. “Most often than not, wicket taking is seen as something that just happens, but it’s not like that. For every wicket that a bowler is picking, there’s an over that’s been bowled before that’s created that wicket.”
The delivery in the lead up to the first wicket (84kph) was 92.5 kph. The ball before his second wicket (94.2 kph) was 83.3 kph. Just as the seamers set up a batter by bowling wide and then producing a sharp inswinger, Ashwin, the wily old spinner that he is, does it with variations in speed. On days when there is no turn to play with, he freely dances around the crease in his delivery stride to create the variation. Sometimes, he brings out the round-arm delivery or even tries the leg-spinner.
In his words, his 24 balls are 24 events in a T20 game. He aims to win every single one of them.