Limitless
On the absurdity of Ravichandran Ashwin
If I were an international bowler, I’d have a sound-proofed room in my house with a hit me balloon just to vent out my daily frustration at Ravichandran Ashwin. My therapist would’ve been a millionaire.
Consider the professional athlete, dedicating decades to the obsessive honing of their craft, all to excel in one singular skill. For the spinner, it’s a mastery of line, length, loop, drift, and more. Spin bowling, devoid of the physical intimidation of pace, demands command over both land and air. It’s a tough gig, especially around batters who bench press 150 kgs and use bats as wide as doors. Ashwin, it would be safe to say, has a case to be considered a spin-bowling great. With a fraying, weary red ball, he is a machine that generates wickets.
But with him, the first layer is never enough. He is also India’s most successful new ball bowler since his debut. Yes, that’s not a typo. The past thirteen years have witnessed a deluge of fast-bowling talent, a bounty the likes of which this land has never seen before. From the ether emerged a production line churning out the likes of Ishant, Bhuvaneshwar, Shami, Umesh, Bumrah, and Siraj. Guns of the highest quality. However, when the lens is narrowed to the first 20 overs of a Test innings — a phase where the ball is still new and traditionally resistant to turn — and filtered for at least 20 wickets, no man has claimed more wickets or boasts a better average than Ravichandran Ashwin, the off-spinner.
The numbers get more outrageous with every layer. Only 2.5% of male Test cricketers have gone on to play a 100 games and a ludicrous 0.28% have taken 500 or more wickets. Amongst the elite nine to have breached that threshold, the other eight have one Test century between them. Ashwin has five.
Only five spinners get to wear the crested blazer of Club 500: Warne, Murali, Kumble, Nathan Lyon and Ashwin. Warne and Muralitharan are titans of the game, the first names that pop into the mind when spin bowling is invoked. Technical and creative geniuses. They made the ball do things that others couldn’t think of. And watching them was a truly operatic experience, such was the thrill they brought to their performance. The BB King and Miles Davis of spin bowling, if you will.
Ashwin, however, is closer to Phillip Glass. Minimalist one day, experimental the other — an enigma without a pivot. He is perpetually in motion, studying the same batter from different angles, seeking the slightest twitch of a thumb. His spells are often elaborate experiments, sometimes aimed at exposing a chink in a batter’s defence, other times to put his own theories to the test. He once bowled leg-spin for an entire spell in a domestic match. The suggestion might seem naive, but it wouldn’t be beyond Ashwin to derive more joy from the process of unravelling a batter than from the actual fall of the wicket.
Over the last few years, he has garnered, and I suspect, enjoyed, a reputation of being a complete nerd. He is fascinated with information. When he can’t do his research on the pitch, he is at it with the analysts in some corner of the dressing room. During a lovely interview with Siddharth Monga in December 2021, Ashwin let us peek into his obsession.
“When England came to India, I watched their whole Sri Lanka series without missing one ball. I would immediately go back to Hari [the India analyst] and ask him what speed [Lasith] Embuldeniya was bowling, what speed Dilruwan [Perera] was bowling, what percentage of balls were within the stumps. We have this app where we can sort, so I watched again all the Dilruwan Perera videos.
I will watch every single ball. And I will watch slow-mo, super slow-mo. I try and see if I can dissect it. If there are differences in triggers, use split-screen. If I’m not able to entirely dissect it, I go to Hari and ask him to put a split screen on Ball A, Ball B, Ball C.”
Just the other week in Dharamshala, as Ashwin was walking through a guard of honour for his 100th Test, he had the look of a physicist grappling with the final stages of a problem, itching to find the right parameters. The last Test of a long season was basically another opportunity to unleash his intrusive thoughts on twenty-two potential guinea pigs.
Imagine the plight of batters facing him. When pitted against a mind that is chaotic, unpredictable, yet undeniably genius, the notion of safety becomes a mere illusion. A hundred gigabytes of Ashwin footage wouldn’t prepare you for the abrupt shift in his wrist action during a brief spell, a change inspired by his sudden suspicion that undercutting the ball would lend it more drift.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgOIyVRrh5M
A testament to his greatness is that his experiments haven’t come at the cost of performance. Amongst all men to have picked more than 380 Test wickets, Ashwin has the second best strike-rate (balls per wicket). Be it on flat, hard tracks or jagged minefields, in Bombay or Birmingham, if Ashwin has a red ball in his hand, wickets are inevitable.
You couldn’t ask for a better problem solver. Like another Indian member from the 500-wicket club that I’m sure you noticed missing from the passage above, Ashwin has become a beacon of safety for Indian captains and fans.
Anil Kumble played a lot of his cricket surrounded by bowling attacks that promised little and delivered even less. Captains would often look towards him every other minute because he at least guaranteed an interrogation. At times, the batters would have a lot of answers, but Kumble rarely ran out of questions. Even on his worst days, he never let someone off without a workout.
And he too, like Ashwin, navigated his career amidst constant chatter about his perceived limitations, even after claiming an absolute truckload of Test wickets.
“Sachin Tendulkar and I started our careers together. We both went through similar challenges. One had to prove everyone right, I had to prove everyone wrong.”
I think Ashwin and Kumble found kindred spirits in each other. In the year that Kumble coached the Indian team, Ashwin played every Test, amassing 99 wickets and scoring two centuries in 17 games. More than anyone else, Kumble recognised what Ashwin could achieve with a potent bowling attack and a cloak of confidence.
It’s somewhat tragic that not everyone has shared this belief.
One aspect that often gets overlooked amidst the celebration of his career is how much cricket Ashwin has missed and continues to miss. When India tours England, Australia, South Africa, or New Zealand, he often loses the sole spinner’s spot to Ravindra Jadeja’s control with both ball and bat. And, many would argue, rightly so. Jadeja is a world-class all-rounder. When those missed games are viewed through the prism of Ashwin’s report card, it’s a bit scary to consider what he would have achieved with a serious dig even away from home.
True to form, he has challenged this pattern too. For a long time, he was saddled with the unfortunate reputation of being a home-track bully. A nagging injury record made things even worse. Over the last few tours, even with limited opportunities, he has blown that label to dust. Starting with that dreamboat of a delivery to Alastair Cook in Birmingham, Ashwin has been exceptional overseas, arguably becoming the world’s best spinner even in conditions that don’t favour spin.
His growth as an all-conditions cricketer peaked in one of Indian cricket’s proudest moments in recent memory. While Ashwin didn’t play that epochal final Test in Brisbane, he was instrumental in India’s comeback in Melbourne and in preserving the scoreline in Sydney. Hell, that batting effort in Sydney alone should’ve earned him a statue, if we’re being completely honest.
The boulder-sized milestones of 100 Tests and 500 wickets were only a matter of time. The deeper Ashwin went into his career, the better he emerged. Even in this Test series, he had to cop the first blow and find a way to tackle the hyper-aggressive English batting. Obviously, he finished with more wickets than anyone else on either side.
It isn’t every day that you type and delete the word ‘special’ from the outro of a piece. Special is a high compliment, but it somehow felt inadequate. So, let’s try again. If there is ever a Mt. Rushmore equivalent for Indian cricket, Ravichandran Ashwin’s face should be carved on it. You won’t find many greater match-winners to have worn the navy blue India cap.
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