Ravichandran Ashwin: Out to prove a point

On August 1, Ravichandran Ashwin became the first Indian spinner to claim a four-wicket haul on the opening day of a Test match in England. As per statistician Mohandas Menon, there have been several Indian spinners who claimed three wickets on the opening day of a Test match in England.

Ashwin bowled the first over of the second day in search of his fifth wicket, but as it happened, it was Shami who wrapped up the England first innings, picking up his third wicket of the innings on the tenth ball of the day. Ashwin, meanwhile, was the most successful bowler for India taking 4/62 in 26 overs. The smile was back big time on the thinking offie's face—the effort put in over the past year or so was finally paying off.

At Edgbaston on Wednesday, he started with a bang, bowling Alistair Cook out with a classic delivery—the ball pitched on the middle stump and spun past the outside edge and hit the off stump. The batsman missed the line completely. He then went on to create a huge dent in England's middle order, cleaning up Ben Stokes and Jos Buttler, followed by the wicket of Stuart Broad. The wicket was slow—he teased, tested and preyed on the batsmen's minds, mixing up the stock off breaks with the carrom ball and the arm ball.

“When I came here for my county stint last year, I realised the speed at which you have to bowl, especially spin bowling, is important. The wickets are extremely slow here even on the first day. You can have a bit of bounce but if the pace is not correct, the batsman will have a lot of time to play on the front foot and back foot,” said Ashwin after the first day's play while speaking with Team India bowling coach Bharath Arun on bcci.tv.

A fierce competitor, he found his role shrinking in the shorter formats. But in red-ball cricket, Ashwin has always been one of India's main bowling threats. His away numbers, however, do not match up to his home record and the Chennai-based bowler was keen to correct this anomaly. Day one of the first Test match at Edgbaston was a step in that direction. Of the 302 wickets he has amassed till now in 59 Test matches, 95 have been earned away from home, in non-conducive conditions. His England stats from the previous tour in 2014 weren't too encouraging, though—only three wickets in two Tests.

Pondering over the good and the bad, Ashwin said that he worked consciously on weeding out the bad habit that had crept into his bowling. “I went through a particular good phase with my action—lot of bad habits had come in—these were things which, I told myself, I had to work upon.”

But the going, even for India's premier slow bowler, hasn't been smooth. He found himself out of favour, because of the two rising young leg-spinners in the shorter format—Kuldeep Yadav and Yuzvendra Chahal. His economy rate kept creeping up discomfortingly. He even declared he was trying to bowl leg-spin during the last domestic season and ahead of the IPL, clearly looking to add to his repertoire in the shorter formats of the game. The news wasn't well received by his peers. As for Test cricket, his uncluttered mind and action have paid off. “Even over the last 12-18 months when I spent lot of time playing club cricket, I have been working on simplifying my action a bit, make sure I get more body into the delivery and create something in the air on the ball. I wanted to take wicket out of equation. That particular thing of “doing” batsmen in the air, is what I have always consciously worked upon. The ball sometimes just gives up. In one of those pursuits, I thought simplifying my action was important,” he said.

There had been a lot of talk about Kuldeep Yadav being included in the playing XI in the run up to the Test series. But Ashwin, with this performance, has not only exposed host England's spin psychosis, but has also made a statement that no one, including his skipper Virat Kohli, can ignore.