Ashwin took four wickets in the second innings to become the fastest bowler to 300 Test wickets; helped hosts complete an innings-&-239-run victory over Sri<\/p>\n
LankaRavichandran Ashwin smiled an academic, near apologetic smile. The wicket-keeper and the close-in cordon ambled to greet him. His colleagues from the<\/p>\n
far-flung outposts quizzically peered at the big screen as the umpire sought further confirmation as to whether it was Ashwin\u2019s carrom ball or the wicketkeeper\u2019s<\/p>\n
hand that had disturbed Lahiru Gamage\u2019s off-bail. Kohli and Co, meanwhile, had one hand on the souvenir stumps. No sooner had the the telly umpire confirmed<\/p>\n
it than Kohli pulled one out and gave it to Ashwin. With a reluctant grin, Ashwin waved the stumps at the audience, before he began scrapping the dirt at the<\/p>\n
base of the stump.<\/p>\n
Whether or not Ashwin would get his 300th \u2014 or, indeed, Umesh his 100th \u2014 was the only strand of suspense that remained in the match once Sri Lanka\u2019s top-<\/p>\n
order wilted like thatched huts in a storm. They eventually stumbled to an innings-and-239-run defeat, the heaviest in their history, and they had to thank the<\/p>\n
breezy little ninth-wicket partnership between Dinesh Chandimal and Suranga Lakmal for reducing its margin.<\/p>\n
A devastated Nic Pothas, Sri Lanka\u2019s interim coach, lyrically put their subjugation in perspective, \u201cI believe cricket is a game of chess, for every move there<\/p>\n
should be a counter move. We just didn\u2019t have a counter move.\u201d<\/p>\n
But it was a day when even Ravichandran Ashwin, the most nerdish of Indian bowlers, didn\u2019t have to ponder too deep before plotting a move. There were no<\/p>\n
intense, cat-and-mouse passages of play, an art he has nuanced in the last couple of years. He needn\u2019t fiddle with his lengths or lines too often, or summon his<\/p>\n
full bag of trickery. He just relied on his natural variations and the marginal assistance he was getting from the pitch to scythe through the tail-end of Sri<\/p>\n
Lanka\u2019s innings. Only when Lakmal began to ride on an unbelievable amount of luck did he begin to play around with his tools more often. Eventually, it was the<\/p>\n
carrom ball that fetched him the 300th. There was a sense of propriety to it, because it was this variation of his that was widely raved about when he burst onto<\/p>\n
the scene on a balmy Feroz Shah Kotla November morning seven years ago. Maybe, Ashwin picking his 300th at that ground \u2014 which hosts the next Test \u2014<\/p>\n
would have fused a sense of symmetry.<\/p>\n
A steep upward curve
\nThen again, Nagpur is not an inapt venue to trace his metamorphosis, or the ludicrously steep upward curve his career has traced between the two Tests at<\/p>\n
Jamtha \u2014 the first against South Africa in 2015 and this one. He took 12\/98 versus South Africa and 8\/130 in this match. Neither is symbolic, or fully reflective<\/p>\n
of his career, and the leaps it has taken in between. The first came on perhaps the most under-prepared strip India has played in the last decade, a spitting<\/p>\n
cobra of a wicket. The second was a usual slothful Nagpur surface, where if Sri Lanka\u2019s batting were more purposeful or motivated, he would have had to earn<\/p>\n
his wickets, and the fruits of the labour would have been sweeter.<\/p>\n
Between the two Nagpur Tests, he has picked a whopping 123 sticks in 22 Tests, at an average of 24.44. A bulk of those Tests were nabbed at home, or the<\/p>\n
home-like conditions of Sri Lanka and the West Indies, where some of the pitches in the Test series last year were as dry as those in Asia. But the recurring<\/p>\n
theme, most often, was that he didn\u2019t always need the elements to facilitate his wreckages. He executed it by combining the old-fashioned tools of spin<\/p>\n
bowling, such as flight, dip, loop and ripping turn, with the new-age deception kit of doosras, carrom balls and sliders (occasionally leg-breaks and seam-ups<\/p>\n
too), which makes it difficult to typify him. An orthodox experimentalist, or a radical conventionalist, or a first-of-a-kind hybrid offie, or someone who just keeps<\/p>\n
up with the times. Just like the best batsmen of this generation who don\u2019t compromise on the orthodoxy of the game, but have expanded its scope and canvas.<\/p>\n
While Ashwin\u2019s experimental streak has been criticised in the past, it now rings conclusively hollow, not least when he\u2019s picking wickets a such a consistent clip,<\/p>\n
winning en route five man-of-the-series plaques on the spin.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of people have asked me why I experiment too much. But I have always been that way and unless you experiment, you don\u2019t know how good or bad it can<\/p>\n
be. You might fail, but then you also come know that it doesn\u2019t work for you and look to change,\u201d he had said sometime ago.<\/p>\n
In any case, his staggering numbers should transcend geographical constrictions. To pick so many wickets and milestones at such mind-boggling frequency, even<\/p>\n
if it has been mostly accomplished at home, is no less glittering a feat. The man he surpassed to be the fastest to 300-wickets-mark\u2014Dennis Lillee\u2014himself<\/p>\n
validates this argument. He has played only four Tests in Asia \u2014 three in Pakistan, one in Sri Lanka and none in India. He took a combined haul of six wickets,<\/p>\n
at 68.33. Muttiah Muralitharan averaged 75 in Australia and 45 in India. He had terrific records in England (48 at 19.20), New Zealand (30 at 19.96) and South<\/p>\n
Africa (37 at 26), but Muralitharan was a different beast.<\/p>\n
Even Kumble, when his picked his 300th wicket, had hideous aggregates outside Asia \u2014 90 in Australia, 63 in England, 40 in New Zealand and 35 in South<\/p>\n
Africa. Ashwin\u2019s corresponding figures are better \u2014 54 in Australia and 33 in England while he went wicketless in his only Test in South Africa. But from the 2002<\/p>\n
tour to England, Kumble was a more penetrative force abroad. Kumble is hopeful that Ashwin too will turn the corner around.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was around the same age as him (31), when I began bowing well abroad. So I\u2019m sure that given the way Ashwin has matured over the years, he has the tools<\/p>\n
to succeed abroad,\u201d he said in a recent function in Delhi.<\/p>\n
Ashwin himself, in his post-match interview with bcci.tv, said he was confident of ticking perhaps the only box that remains unchecked. He asserts he\u2019s not too<\/p>\n
piqued by the criticism, rather he\u2019s looking forward to \u201cbowling without any mental baggages\u201d abroad. But to prove himself, who he says is his fiercest critic, he<\/p>\n
would envisage a reversal of overseas fortunes. The celebrations then would be bubblier and louder.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ashwin took four wickets in the second innings to become the fastest bowler to 300 Test wickets; helped hosts complete an innings-&-239-run victory over Sri LankaRavichandran Ashwin smiled an academic, near apologetic smile. The wicket-keeper and the close-in cordon ambled to greet him. His colleagues from the far-flung outposts quizzically peered at the big screen […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11464,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11463"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11465,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11463\/revisions\/11465"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}