Kane Williamson came with a clear plan to nullify Ashwin. He would shuffle across. The plan would serve multiple purposes, A) It could force Ashwin’s line wider off the off-stump. B) He could get outside the line and sweep, which he performed expertly, C) He could milk him for singles down the ground. The plan worked perfectly on the second day, by the end of which Williamson had motored along to a half-century.
But the third day was different. Ashwin would begin with an in-out field and bowl standard off-breaks, flighted, dropping and turning, inviting him to cover-drive, and keeping the region vacant. To establish his superiority, he cover-drove him for a couple. He began the tease, frequently varying length, angle, and pace. Williamson still dealt comfortably with all the questions Ashwin posed, But the constant length-change had begun to disturb him.
Then Ashwin flung a full, over-spun delivery on fourth stump, delivered a widish angle from the crease, that bounced more than Williamson had adjudged. He paddle-swept the ball for a couple, but the extra bounce meant he could not commit to the front foot.
The next ball landed fractionally short of the good length area. Williamson pressed back. The line was so wide outside the off-stump that his instinct was to slap it through covers. He dragged his feet further wide. Even if the ball spun back, he could leave it; even if it hit him the impact would be outside the off-stump. He accounted for the turn, but not this turn. The ball, imparted with massive revolutions, spun back like a drunk truck, past his bat after landing on a developing rough, which accounted for the low bounce.
Kumar Sangakkara: c Vijay b Ashwin 18; 2nd innings, P Sara Oval, 2015
Kumar Sangakkara was no muck-as-any left-hander against off-spinners. He often destroyed them. That is until he encountered Ashwin in his farewell series, where he consumed him four times in as many innings.
He read lengths so early that he always had time to play or not play his strokes. So when he strode out to the middle for his farewell innings, he batted with as much clarity as he always had in his life, despite Ashwin’s recent success. Immediately, he charged at him and swished him for a couple through the leg-side. Ashwin slowed the next ball that he defended on the front foot.
India’s Ravichandran Ashwin celebrates with teammates after taking the wicket of England’s Zak Crawley on the second day of the third test cricket match between India and England, at the Niranjan Shah Stadium, in Rajkot, Friday, Feb. 16, 2024. (PTI)
The next ball he faced off Ashwin, 15 Ishant Sharma balls later, was to be the Sri Lankan talisman’s last in cricket. Immediately he repositioned Murali Vijay from mid-on to gully. He also had a slip, a silly point and cover. Often, Ashwin keeps the cover region vacant, but here he has kept one, inverted his 6-3 leg-side predilection, opening up spaces in the leg-side, Sangakkara’s preferred zone against offies. Ashwin then went wide of the crease and reduced the ball-speed for maximum hang-time. Sangakkara stretched his front foot. But the angle and drift opened up his front shoulder; as a chain reaction the bat descended on an angle, the face semi-close. The drift and angle has already fooled him, so would dip and turn. The ball dropped a few centimetres from where he had anticipated, stranding him afar the ball’s pitch. He ended up pushing feebly at the ball, outside-edging it to Vijay.
Steve Smith: c Rahane b Ashwin 1; 1st innings, Adelaide, 2020
On at least three instances in Tests, Ashwin has consumed Steve Smith with the one that goes straight on. But this one was special because of the pre-series planning. A few months before the series, he would deconstruct Smith with video analyst Prasanna Agoram.
The plan Ashwin devised was to bowl a trifle quicker through the air; he would neither bowl fully flat nor toss it. “It will make him (Smith) feel he can come forward but he won’t be able to. It will make him feel he has to go back but that’s when he will feel rushed,” Agoram once explained this to the newspaper. He would then polish the ball in the county circuit.
So it began. Smith had scraped to one off 26 balls, before Virat Kohli introduced Ashwin, the pink ball still agleam. The first ball was tossed up outside the off-stump, which Smith defended. The second was similarly tossed up, but landed on the off-stump. The next ball, Smith would have assumed would skid onto his stumps. That’s how a lot of spinners go about, distracted by his shuffle, to ping his pads. But Ashwin second-guesses the second-guesses of the batsmen.
The next ball landed fractionally short of a spinner’s good length. The length froze Smith’s feet. Crease-tied, he used his hands to wriggle him out of trouble. But Ashwin had over-spun this; the consequent extra bounce defeated him. The commentators wondered whether it was a natural variation. It was not. He just cut his thumb across the seam, so that the ball did not spin and skid straight on.
David Warner: b Ashwin 33; 1st innings, Bengaluru 2017
For a change, this wicket came when Ashwin was bowling from over the wicket to the left-hander. On a pitch that was taking turn and keeping low, Warner had given Australia a strong start in response to India’s total of 189. After testing him enough from around the stumps, Ashwin moved over the wicket to make full use of the rough created by Mitchell Starc. It is an angle that Ashwin least explores and one that definitely had Warner caught in two minds, especially when it landed in a blind spot. As Ashwin slowed this one, to ensure the ball finds enough grip off the rough surface, Warner initially thought of padding up, but with the ball turning sharply after pitching, it sowed doubts of seed as the left-hander played all over him. The ball ended up hitting the top off-stump as Ashwin got the first of eight wickets in the match.
India’s bowler Ravichandran Ashwin celebrates the wicket of England’s batter Joe Root during the fourth day of the second Test match between India and England, at Dr Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy ACA-VDCA Cricket Stadium, in Visakhapatnam, Monday, Feb. 5, 2024. (PTI Photo)
Alastair Cook: b Ashwin 13, b Ashwin 0; Birmingham, 2018
On an overcast Day 1 morning, after seamers failed to give a break-through, Virat Kohli turned to Ashwin as early as the seventh over. It raised eye-brows, but it was a well thought-out plan, where India wanted Ashwin to make use of the early morning moisture on the dead grass. And the off-spinner stuck in his second over with a peach. Bowling from around the wicket, he angled this one into the line of the stumps that made Cook commit to a forward defence. And as it left Ashwin’s hand and drifted into the middle-stump, Cook thought he had it covered. But the new Duke ball got the grip it needed off the surface as it spun just enough to hit the top of off-stump. This was a classical off-spinners dismissal. It didn’t end here for Cook. In the second innings, Ashwin would test him with a similar delivery and the opener, this time, probably with the first innings dismissal playing in his mind, would half press forward. In the next split second, he would hear the new ball take the bails with it. It was a carbon copy of his first innings dismissal.
Jonny Bairstow: lbw Ashwin 51, 2nd innings, Mumbai, 2016
This was a series where Ashwin was at the peak of his prowess. Having already won duels over each of the English batsmen on traditional Indian flat decks that saw wear and tear on Day 4 and 5, Ashwin’s 12-wicket haul in the match was one of his best bowling performances. And the pick of the lot was the one that had Bairstow totally outfoxed. Early on Day 5, having tested Bairstow only with his off-breaks (side spin and conventional), Ashwin delivered a carom a ball or what he calls sudoku ball — a delivery he picked from the streets of Chennai while playing tennis ball cricket. As Bairstow prepared to work him out on the leg-side, it pitched on the middle-stump and went the other way, hitting him flush in front of the stumps. As the ball made contact with his right-pad, Bairstow was all squared-up at the crease, giving a puzzled look as to what had unfolded. From deceiving the batsman with a variation he seldom used in the innings to the well disguised execution, there was everything magical about this Ashwin’s delivery.