Damp pitch & spin bowling: How a crafty Ashwin used moisture to trouble England
Derek Underwood - one of England’s finest slow left-arm bowlers - once wrote for The Guardian: “It was damp, entirely grassless and mottled, seemingly perfect conditions for spin bowling."
Damp pitch and spin bowling: How does that pair get along? When there are moist, overcast and cold conditions, it’s swing and seam that immediately comes to mind.
But how come an off-spinner, R Ashwin, who has been discarded from the limited-overs format for a long time, bag four wickets (25-7-60-4) on day one of a Test match against England at Birmingham when the first part of the day was expected to be dominated by the pacers due to its moist nature.
The visiting Indian team had fielded four pacers - Ishant Sharma, Umesh Yadav, Mohammed Shami and Hardik Pandya - with a lone spinner in Ashwin.
Virat Kohli said at the toss: “We were thinking of bowling first with the cloud cover this morning.”; while his English counterpart Joe Root, who opted to bat first, stated: “Some moisture which should burn off, looks good to bat”
To everyone’s surprise, Kohli brought his lead spinner Ashwin on as early as the seventh over. 11 balls into his spell, Ashwin, from around the wicket, got one to drift towards leg stump and spun the ball past Alastair Cook’s bat to disturb his stumps.
How can a new ball in English conditions spin that much on a day one wicket that had a bit of moisture? Let’s go back to the 2013 Champions Trophy final where India beat England at the same venue - Birmingham.
The heroes then were none other than Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja. Under wet conditions, a damp pitch and two new balls in 50-overs cricket, the duo ended up with combined figures of 8-1-39-4! Remember that last over by Ashwin who spun the ball a long way to defend 14 runs.
As a reporter with the Deccan Chronicle newspaper then, I spoke to then Ashwin’s bowling coach and now India team manager Sunil Subramaniam, a quality former Tamil Nadu spinner, on how could a ball spin that much on a damp wicket.
“The important thing that a spinner must do is to assess the conditions before drawing out a plan. In England, the air is thin. Under those circumstances what happens is, the ball comes out of a spinner’s hand a touch slower than what it would be in sub-continent. Therein lies the opportunity to deceive a batsman,” Sunil told Deccan Chronicle in 2013.
He further stressed that use of two new balls under wet conditions had actually turned in favour of the two spinners then. On Thursday, Ashwin spun the new cherry to a bigger extent and once the wicket started to dry out, it was his guile that reaped him success.
“New balls from either end did the trick for the two spinners. A new ball spins a lot in that sort of a Birmingham wicket than a used ball. Also, a 20-over-a-side contest meant that the ball was bound to be shiny throughout the innings. This enabled them to grip the ball better. Also, whatever the conditions are one must have the class to exploit them. (James) Tredwell hardly spun a ball while the Indian duo did the damage,” Sunil had mentioned.
Of course, Ashwin, who had put in more body into every delivery, had the skill in him to stick to his guns throughout the day to trouble the England batting unit.