Erapalli Prasanna called Ravichandran Ashwin’s mid-series retirement “unfortunate”, while lavishing praise on his junior.
On Wednesday, Ashwin shocked the cricket world by abruptly announcing his international retirement at the end of the third Test between India and Australia in Brisbane. With two more Tests still to be played in the ongoing series, the off-spinner’s decision created much scope for conjecture. For someone who has 537 Test wickets, including 37 five-fors, and six hundreds, the end shouldn’t have been like that.
Prasanna concurred. “Ashwin was the best off-spinner of the present era,” the great man, who was part of the famed Indian spin quartet in the 1960s and ’70s, told RevSportz. “Unfortunately, he had to call it a day in the middle of a tour. It’s very unfortunate. There must have been some sort of indication to him that his services wouldn’t be required during this tour. And that I feel is the reason.”
Prasanna himself was a master of his craft, off-spin that is, during his playing days. The hard numbers – 189 wickets from 49 Tests at 30.38 – hardly tell the story. Cricket was different back then, without neutral umpires and DRS. The man from Karnataka could make the ball talk in the air. Ian Chappell, the former Australia captain, called him the finest off-spinner he played against. Prasanna and his ‘partners in crime’ – Bishan Bedi, Bhagwat Chandrasekhar and S Venkataraghavan- had the ability to make spin bowling feel like music with the lightness of touch.
“I feel he (Ashwin) still could have played,” said Prasanna. “He is a match-winner. But unfortunately, I don’t know why the team management thought that way. The Indian cricket team will miss him and it will be incredibly difficult to fill the void. Also, it’s a wrong time, for India don’t have a back-up (off) spinner to replace him.”
The Indian team management wants to groom Washington Sundar to pick up the baton. Prasanna is far from convinced. “There are many bowlers like Washington Sundar in the country, and he still has a long way to go,” he observed. You cannot replace Ashwin (with Washington).”
With the final Test of the ongoing series to be played at the spin-friendly Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG), should Ashwin have waited until the end of the tour before calling it quits? “See, when he gets a feeling he wouldn’t be required, how could he wait?” Prasanna asked as a counter-question. “He has been ignored, by and large, in overseas series.”
What set Ashwin apart as a bowler? “His ability to continuously raise his standards,” said Prasanna. “He is a very intelligent bowler. He started with the basic approach of taking wickets and went through the process of steady improvements. It’s a sad thing that he has called it a day.”
Ashwin didn’t have a Prasanna-like floater. Nor did he have a Saqlain Mushtaq-like doosra. He more than made up for it by developing a deadly carrom ball. He was a master of using the drift. Going along, he also added a back-spinner to his armoury. “It’s about taking wickets, and Ashwin did that with aplomb,” Prasanna concluded.
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