Ravichandran Ashwin has been at the top of the International Cricket Council Test bowler rankings, for, like, forever now. Former Australia skipper Steve Waugh, the master of mind games, called him the “Bradman of bowling” recently and that is high praise.
But it is not just bowling. In the last two years, Ashwin has taken such enormous strides with his batting that he deservedly also owns the No. 1 spot in the Test all-rounder rankings. The numbers tell their own story: since the start of India’s tour of West Indies, the Tamil Nadu player has got two centuries and four fifties at an average of 43.06 in 13 matches.
Batting the opposition out of the match
Ashwin is not satisfied though. In an interview with Times of India, when he asked about the fact that all four of his Test centuries had come against West Indies, he answered, “I have been a little unlucky not to have got more hundreds recently. I have batted really well but haven’t got the three figures.”
Really? Perhaps the fact that he could not get a century against New Zealand, England and India rankles with him somewhere. The fact is that Ashwin is an intensely competitive player who works on his batting and really wants to score the big runs.
And, in a way, he is right as well. Against New Zealand in the first Test at Kanpur, Ashwin walked in to bat in the middle of an Indian collapse from 154/1 to 209/5. The off-spinner though counter-attacked skilfully with Rohit Sharma to get India past the 250-mark before being caught out for 40.
The trend continued throughout the series. In Rajkot in the first Test against England, India were still some distance away from England’s total of 537 at 349/5 before Ashwin hit 70 and put on a valuable partnership with Wriddhiman Saha. In the second innings, his 47-run partnership with Virat Kohli probably proved the difference between an England win and a draw.
Ashwin got another half-century in the next Test but his most important contribution with the bat came in the third. After being bowled out for 283, England thought they had a chance with India down at 156/5 and then 204/6. Step up Ashwin whose solid 72 (playing with a niggle) stemmed England’s fight and got India through to 417.
Add another 67 in the last Test in Chennai and that is four half-centuries in one series. Twenty-eight wickets in one series is priceless, but Ashwin’s 306 runs in the entire series also played a huge role in India’s eventual 4-0 hammering of England
Don’t rile Ash
The other thing that Ashwin mentioned was his highly-reported exchange with James Anderson right at the end of the Mumbai Test. This was, in part, because Anderson had sought to downplay Kohli’s brilliant form through the series by saying that home pitches were “taking out” his “technical deficiencies” from the equation.
Ashwin gave him a piece of his mind when Anderson walked out to bat and he touched on that during the interview. “I felt he made a statement of India being not so good which I felt was not very Jimmy Anderson like. I just told him that being the great player that he is, I expected him to be a little more magnanimous,” explained Ashwin.
The Anderson incident did come a little out of the blue, because Ashwin has never been the person to indulge in on-field sledging. Sure, he is passionate about his game and ensures that the batsmen know it when he knocks them over, but he rarely gets into an on-field confrontation. The only other time when Ashwin lost his cool, apart from the Anderson one, was in the Tamil Nadu Premier League last year.
What is the takeaway from that? Don’t rile Ashwin up. Whether it is with bat or ball, he’ll still have the final laugh.
