I remember speaking to WV Raman about Ravi Ashwin once. Raman is one of the most respected cricket voices in the country, and one who analyses the game with a lot of precision. He weighs his words with loads of wisdom.
“Ashwin was very confident about his abilities, and the thing was, he was not afraid to evolve,” said Raman. “Lots of people fall into the trap of being content with whatever is achieved, and success in first-class cricket. Some become content and have reluctance to evolve, or develop as players. There comes a stage where some people take the route of being scared to mess up whatever had given them success till date. So they fall into that kind of negative trap, something that Ashwin didn’t fall into. So he wasn’t afraid to keep on trying and learning new things, and see what he could do better.”
A case in point was the Pink-Ball Test in Adelaide in 2020 where he trumped Steve Smith, putting him in two minds about whether to move forward or go on the defensive. The dismissal was a by-product, but Ashwin’s bigger victory was creating that indecision in Smith’s mind. A classical off-spinner of the great Erapalli Prasanna’s stature always believed in giving the ball air. Toss it up outside the off stump and get the batsman to come forward and drive, while aiming to breach his defences, is the typical off-spinner’s dream delivery.
But Ashwin on that second day in Adelaide created a very different form of deception that Smith was clueless against. What he did was to bowl one whose trajectory lay somewhere in between a flighted and a flatter delivery. The reason was to create confusion in Smith’s mind. He would think he could come forward, but would then realise that he couldn’t. He would then play a half-baked defensive shot, and the skidder would take the outside edge. All this while Smith was trying to play for the turn, but the angle and bounce fooled him completely.
It was an exhibition of extraordinary cricketing acumen, with one world-class operator comprehensively outwitting the other. In Adelaide, it was while bowling over the wicket. Nearly four years earlier in Dharamsala, he had got Smith bowling round the wicket. In a battle of the best, snuffing out the opposition’s key batter can create panic. And while Adelaide became all about India’s 36 all out and the noise that it caused, Australia’s rank and file felt a sense of discomfort seeing a gutsy performer like Smith wilt.
The domino effect could be seen in Matthew Wade’s dismissal, trying to indulge in some irresponsible slogging, in the next Test at the MCG while opening the innings. If it was slip in the first Test, Ashwin laid a leg-trap at the MCG and the fidgety Smith walked into it offering a catch to leg gully.
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The Sydney Test, the only game where Smith enjoyed some success, saw Ashwin account him for the third time, this time with a flighted delivery that enticed Smith into going for a drive and trapped him leg before. Three dismissals in three innings, against contemporary cricket’s best Test batsman, was definitely testament to Ashwin’s greatness. Overpowering Smith regularly was certainly one of the more tangible contributions that Ashwin has made in his appearances outside the sub-continent.
Prasanna Agoram, the performance analyst who had worked with the South African team and multiple IPL sides, had beautifully explained in The Indian Express how Ashwin controls the spin imparted on the delivery.
“… with a subtle sleight of hand, he can restrict the break in his off-spinners,” he wrote. “By merely changing his thumb position on the seam, and while keeping the grip and release the same, he can reduce the amount of spin. When he wants to spin it less, he will have his thumb cut across the seam. When he wants it to turn more, the thumb will go beside the seam, not touching it, curled in towards the index finger. So without a discernible change in action, he can control the spin.”
Agoram had given a sneak peek into the artist’s art. He had toured Australia thrice earlier, and with no disrespect to the effort that he put in on those tours, never had Ashwin looked as assured about his craft as he did during the last series in 2021. It was not just about those wickets that Ashwin got, but also the enormous self-belief in his own abilities.
Despite all the barbs that have come his way over the years, Ashwin never wavered from his conviction that he had to expand his repertoire as a bowler. You must give him credit for not paying heed to what others thought of him.
Australia 2021 was proof that even overseas, he was trying to enjoy the battles against the best batters of the opposition. He sets them up with specific plans and enjoys the process of setting up those plans. The impatience to get a wicket which was there earlier, and which made him try many different things, is gone now. He has proved the old adage about spinners maturing later to be fairly accurate. He is relishing being the hunter who goes after his prey.
“During a Test match in Sydney [2014], experts said a spinner should go for wickets,” Ashwin had said at the Arun Jaitley Stadium during a domestic game. “And when I went for wickets, they said I should bowl tight and give a break to the fast bowlers. Now, this is the wall I hit all the time. So the battle is within me, as I can’t keep looking outside.”
At one point, battling perceptions seemed to be his day job. “For the better part of my 150 wickets, experts kept on saying that I was trying variations, when I knew I wasn’t,” he said. “These are opinions created by people, for which I have to give answers. I don’t have time for that anymore, as I want to enjoy my game.”
Ashwin has always battled benchmarks that he set for himself, and it’s only fitting that this story has now brought him to The Oval for the WTC final. He knows that if he is unsuccessful at The Oval, once a surface where spinners made hay, people will have an opinion. And that will ready him for battle. Ashwin is a story by himself, with the next chapter coming up on June 7.
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