The ON and OFF Spinner

RAVICHANDRAN ASHWIN, The man who made a grand entry into international cricket by virtue of his highly successful and stunning IPL performances where he earned the most important thing for any player, CAPTAIN’S TRUST.  His skill, variation and his no fear attitude won him admiration from across the country. Tall, arrogant, aggression all the qualities that we associate with the fast bowlers were his strengths. From a T20 specialist, he transformed into a successful test bowler picking up fastest 100 wickets by an Indian, scoring a test century in his debut series , marrying his childhood girlfriend, everything was falling into place for him. He went on to replace Harbhajan singh as India’s number 1 test bowler.

But, it was just a beginning of a tough journey that was about to come. He was criticized for his inability to pick up wickets outside Asia which began from the Australian tour 2012. It became much worse when England toured India in 2013 where his counterparts Swann and Panesar were dominating the Indian batsman in spin friendly conditions, and he did nothing. He soon lost his test place to Jadeja in 2013-14 Indian tour of South Africa after being wicketless in the all important Johannesburg test match. To Jadeja’s credit he was able to bowl in a particular channel, a much tighter line with more control than Ashwin, which enabled Indian team to restrict run flow from atleast one end.

With his test place already been taken, Ashwin was under tremendous pressure to hold his limited overs position. Batsman across the world started reading his variations, playing his much hyped carom ball as an outswinger, he became less effective. With batsman like Maxwell and even Indian domestic players in IPL started to attack him, which is the best possible way to play him. On the other hand Jadeja, Mishra, Chawla, Axar Patel started to make their cases to replace Ashwin as India’s top spinner.

That was the time when he came back with a different game plan .In mid 2013 he started to bowl around the wicket to right handers. A tighter line aiming at middle and leg stump, fuller in length which ensured that the right handed batsman can no longer come down the track and hit him for a six over mid wicket or long on. It was a very thoughtful and intelligent plot used by him to overcome his failures. With this new approach he was highly successful in Champions trophy 2013, which india eventually won and world T20 championship 2014, where he became India’s successful bowler, especially in semi finals against South Africa where he took crucial wickets of de Villiers and Amla with a delivery which made the great Adam Gilchrist to term it as the ball of the century.

Come IPL 2014, the same approach led to his second downfall in his career. Maxwell was hitting him all over the park with his unorthodox approach. In fact he started to bowl leg spinners and arm balls coming around the wicket and used his stock delivery the off spinner rarely. This brought a lot of criticism from all the former players, terming it as a negative approach.

With Jadeja’s unfortunate injury and Karn Sharma’s unimpressive debut made way for Ashwin’s comeback into test cricket in Dec 2014. He was asked to hold the run flow from one end which he did exceedingly well. He changed his line from outside off stump to off and middle with more control in his lengths. He may not have picked many wickets in that series but bowled lot of overs with excellent economy, creating pressure and picking up odd wickets. Not many off spinners were much successful in playing test cricket in Australia, even the likes of Muralitharan and Swann.

Ashwin was not played much in Carlton tri series, which the team management used to test its players and combinations.

Ashwin began his 2015 world cup on a positive note, bowling three maiden overs and breaking the all important second wicket partnership. His success continued against South Africa, UAE, West Indies and so on. But what has he done to his bowling now which has made him a better and successful ODI bowler now and how long will this success last?

There are various reasons for his improved performance in this series. For his part he has now stared bowling the traditional off spinner line, giving a loop, allowing lot of revolutions in the ball, using the drift that one gets in Australian conditions. He has done the same things on many occasions in the past. But this time he has added a new dimension to his bowling by varying his pace for each and every delivery beautifully. This is the key factor for his success in current world cup. In the process he has added a new variation in his armour, the quicker ball that he bowls at above 100kmph and is much similar to that of an outswinger. He is holding the ball and releasing it with an outswinger’s wrist position. This is very difficult to play as he uses it very rarely. This was revealed by captain cool MSD in his media interactions after the match against UAE. He no longer relies only on carom ball to bring out his variations.

From captain’s side, Dhoni has started using Ashwin as 4^th bowler not the 5^th. Ashwin is a very confident bowler and he likes the responsibility. But in the past year or so  Dhoni was not very keen about Ashwin’s ability and more often we saw him being used after 20 overs. Jadeja was the preferred spinner for Dhoni during that period. That would have created a lot of doubt in Ashwin’s mind. But Somehow Dhoni has realized what is bothering Ashwin and has started to show lot of faith in him and rightly so, India is reaping the benefits.

From fast bowlers side, they are providing excellent start to the innings which makes Ashwin’s job a lot easier, and when they fault little bit, Ashwin is happily taking responsibility like what we saw in the matches against Pakistan and Ireland. Will this be the beginning of a successful chapter in Ashwin’s book? Well let’s hope it is.

  #WE WON'T GIVE IT BACK

-Aswin Palaniappn