Ten years and counting: An era of R Ashwin’s brilliance
The off-spinner is 2nd quickest to 400 Test wickets. Success in South Africa will only boost his value away
Is there more to Ravichandran Ashwin than what his gleaming records show? The question is pertinent not just because Ashwin completed a decade in Test cricket on November 6 but also because by modern measures, it’s absurd that he has only played 81 Tests. Talent and enterprise are never a concern for someone who was the second quickest to 400 wickets in the history of the game. Yet, Ashwin’s career continues to be punctuated by uncertainties that are not directly his doing. Ashwin is 35. So it’s not unnatural to start winding down the clock on his career. It is this inevitability that triggers the yearning to witness Ashwin in full tilt, on pitches tailor-made for seam bowling, against batting line-ups crammed with right-handers while defeating shaky selection logic that he isn’t quite handy as batting support and so the best spinner ought not to play.
A glance at Ashwin’s bowling record (let’s keep his batting for another day) will tell you it’s the stuff of legend. Since his debut, no one has taken more wickets than him. This despite some of his immediate competitors having played more Tests. Nathan Lyon, for example, has played 99 Tests but taken 398 wickets since Ashwin’s debut. James Anderson has scalped 395 wickets in 104 matches while Stuart Broad has taken 394 in 109. A major aspect contributing to Ashwin’s unimpeachable dominance has been that strike rate at home.
Among spinners with at least 100 wickets, Ashwin has the best strike rate, 47.6, better than Muttiah Muralitharan (50.8), Rangana Herath (51.3), Ravindra Jadeja (56.7), Anil Kumble (59.4), Harbhajan Singh (64.1) and Shane Warne (60.8). Only Muralitharan (45), Herath (26) and Kumble (25) have more fivewicket hauls than Ashwin (24), placing him comfortably ahead of Warne (15), Harbhajan (18) and Jadeja (7).
It’s also worth breaking down his overall strike rate. When he reached 400 wickets during the England series earlier this year, Ashwin had bowled 21,242 balls, making him the fourth-quickest bowler ever—after Dale Steyn, Richard Hadlee and Glenn McGrath—to that feat. At that point, only Herath was anywhere close to Ashwin, having taken 23,835 deliveries to reach 400 wickets. The only reason Muralitharan was quicker to 400 wickets in terms of matches (72 compared to Ashwin’s 77) was because he averaged a higher number of balls per match. While at it, Ashwin also topped the bowling charts in 2015 (62 wickets) and 2016 (72 wickets) and is set to finish 2021 as the highest wicket-taker.
What makes Ashwin and his feats so unique is the element of unconventional he brings to his bowling. His repertoire does not exist in the binary of the off-spin or the doosra. And that’s not always bad. “The first time I saw Ashwin was in the 2008 Duleep Trophy, when we (South) were playing against Central,” said VVS Laxman on TV during last month’s home series against New Zealand. “I never felt he was a bowler for Tests. With the flatter trajectory and the speed he used to bowl, I felt he could play white-ball cricket but not Tests. But if you see now, he has five or six options. He used his cricket smartness and because of that, he has taken so many wickets in his career.”
Active mind
This smartness traces its roots to Ashwin’s inquisitiveness, something former India opener WV Raman—who was coach and selector of Tamil Nadu during Ashwin’s formative years—has first-hand knowledge of. “The thing that struck me about Ashwin was he had a very active mind. He would ask a lot of things,” said Raman from Chennai. “One needed to understand that because it’s so easy for people to get, let’s say, a little irritated at times. It’s important to understand each and every individual is wired differently. It was easy for me because I could detect these things in an individual for the simple reason I was captain more often when I played. The other thing about Ashwin was that he was never short of confidence.”
Ashwin utilised that confidence in understanding what he could and couldn’t do before spending hours improvising or perfecting variations at nets. Not just T20 variations but also oldschool tactics like the leg-side trap that worked wonders for him in Australia earlier this year. It’s a habit Ashwin inculcated early with help from Raman (he bowled left-arm spin early in his career). “I would only say if you are looking to develop a variation bowl it right through one net session. Then you will get a hang of it and you will also develop a certain element of control,” said Raman. “In the earlier years if you could develop control at will, then you will not get fazed when the batter goes after you because then it becomes a matter of patience. For you to develop that control, you need to have patience. That is why at times I would insist he didn’t try too many things.”
Yet, Ashwin gives the vibe of trying too many things in one over—carrom ball, arm ball, top spin, side spin, different sets of drift and pace, using the full length of the crease and creating angles. But that may not mean he is impatient. To him, being patient doesn’t mean stop trying.
It’s this sense of iron-clad conviction that makes playing Ashwin so difficult at times. That also doesn’t mean he misses out on the obvious, like staying on top of left-handed batters. Mastering bowling components like seam position, release point and the angle of trajectory by going wide or close on the crease has helped Ashwin dismiss most left-handed batters in the history of Test cricket, his top-three scalps being Ben Stokes (11 times), David Warner (10) and Alastair Cook (9).
Overseas five-fors
The only restrictive strain about Ashwin’s greatness is that without any five-wicket haul in South Africa, England, New Zealand and Australia—Kumble has five in Australia and South Africa while Harbhajan has three in England, New Zealand and South Africa—it feels limited only to the subcontinent. “Yes, at times there may be justification in not playing him more often abroad but if you take things into consideration over a long period of time I think he has been meted out indifferent treatment,” said Raman.
“When we talk about him not achieving more often abroad, you also have to see the other factors that make up a Test. India now have a highly potent fast bowling attack. How do you then expect Ashwin to take seven wickets every Test? We can’t isolate one individual and take his numbers.”
Success in the upcoming South Africa tour will boost Ashwin’s value away from home. But if this year’s England tour has taught us anything at all, he may also not take any part in it. India can do without Ashwin, but Ashwin can’t do without cricket. His currency isn’t just wickets or runs, but anything to do with the game. That is why he took to social media talking about cricket when he wasn’t playing it, be it during the pandemic or when he was benched during the England tour. Raman believes Ashwin’s future will hinge on him being lucky in terms of fitness and how stimulating the challenges are.
“He is not playing for the money. He would like to play cricket as much as he can,” said Raman.
“To that extent he is really crazy. He is what we call a typical ‘Mambalam boy’ (Mambalam is a cricket-crazy Chennai locality where some residents still play second-division cricket even in their 60s. Ashwin grew up in West Mambalam).”