For a large part of this tour, R. Ashwin watched cricket from the sidelines, read books and practised at nets while India played three Tests without needing his services.
Finally when he got a chance in the fourth Test at Old Trafford, he bowled only 14 overs and conceded 29 runs without getting a wicket.
Critically, he excelled as a batsman (40 and 46 n.o.) and showed that the England attack could be countered.
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Ashwin’s has been a strange story. With 104 Test wickets from 20 matches, averaging 28.78, ideally he should be bestowed with the number-one spinner tag when it is a toss-up between him and Ravindra Jadeja. But ever since the off-spinner’s previous foreign Test at Johannesburg, where he went wicket-less and conceded 108 runs, M.S. Dhoni has preferred Jadeja over Ashwin.
Dhoni’s outlook The decision also stems from Dhoni’s outlook towards spinners as stock bowlers, who are expected to keep it tight, when the team travels. The captain backs Jadeja on this count. Choking runs is the primary goal and the spinner is asked to bowl around the wicket with fielders causing a traffic jam on the on-side.
It doesn’t help that Ashwin, like most Indian spinners at the start of their careers, has a record that is skewed in favour of Tests at home.
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In the three Tests that he played during India’s 2011-12 tour of Australia, Ashwin had match hauls of four for 141, zero for 157 and five for 267. Add to it barren stints at Johannesburg and Old Trafford, though in the last named, he didn’t get enough overs.
Overall on foreign shores, he has played five Tests and gained nine wickets that cost 78.00.
But even within his exploits in India (95 wickets from 15 Tests at an average of 24.12), there is also the middling show, by his standards, against the visiting England team during 2012. He ended up with 14 wickets averaging 52.64 while his counterpart Graeme Swann (20 at 24.75) out-spun him. Though normal service resumed against other teams, at some level Ashwin lost his numero-uno spinner status within the team-management.
Embarking on this tour, the obvious senior bowlers, in terms of matches played and wickets taken were Ishant Sharma and Ashwin.
Fielding the best players from the available resources, a word that Dhoni often uses, would have been ideal but that’s where the paradox of Ashwin crops up.
He gets his chance along with Jadeja and not as the latter’s replacement. More galling would be his batting position below the Saurashtra all-rounder. Anyone who saw Ashwin wield a bat here would have factored the qualitative difference.
If Jadeja was premeditated to attack, Ashwin chooses the right balance between defence and aggression. Jadeja may have his triple-tons in domestic cricket but with two Test hundreds, Ashwin is a far superior batsman.
Needs confidence Off-spin legend E.A.S. Prasanna stressed that Ashwin should be given the requisite confidence by the top-brass.
“I am sure if Ashwin had played at least two of the three previous Tests and seeing those surfaces, he would have acquitted himself well and been among the wickets. When he got his chance, he bowled well but there was a defensive mindset. He should be trying to take wickets. The team management also has to make a call on who is the strike bowler and who is the stock bowler. Jadeja may have got a wicket but he is a stock bowler. Ideally, Ashwin should be your strike bowler and he should be given the confidence for that and he will improve,” Prasanna said.
The one area that Jadeja scores over Ashwin is in the outfield but the southpaw hasn’t transferred that same excellence into the slips.
With one more Test at the Oval and a series in Australia towards the year-end, Dhoni and company should firm up their spin-strategy and Ashwin needs to know his role.