How Ashwin ‘Lined’ the Aussies up during the ‘Length’ of the day

That India-Australia series they talk about wasn’t just about Laxman or Dravid. It was about a wiry but feisty off-spinner claiming 32 Aussie wickets, when the next best was Sachin’s tally of 3. A decade later, the ‘turbanator’, a member of the illustrious 400-wicket club, only looks a shadow of his former self, a very faint one at that. What makes the shadow fainter is the glow projected from the other end by a certain R. Ashwin, who like Kumble or Sachin, never aspired to do what he does best. At one point, Ashwin had 6 out of 6 Australian wickets, making some over-enthusiastic fans hope for a place next to Kotla in the venues’ Hall of Fame. That was not to be; Ashwin, though, wouldn’t complain. He seemed to find his mojo that had temporarily vanished after making him the fastest Indian bowler to reach 50 wickets.

It was an interesting day of cricket, as you would know from the many reports that have inundated cricket websites across the internet. What is worth pondering over though, is the absorbing, almost academically perfect, ‘distinguish-between-the-two’ exercise that went on in the middle, at the Chepauk Stadium. Dhoni’s penchant for turning tracks and his extraordinarily perceivable sway over the BCCI honchos meant that he got a track that had some turn right from Day 1. But buying eggs and flour is one thing, baking the cake is completely another; and while Ashwin came in like a master-chef with a cap full of tricks, Harbhajan walked in with a similar cap that was full of doubts. And one doesn’t need Dermot Reeve with his fancy presentations and all the gadgetry that Star Cricket has on the preview and extra-preview shows to understand what was happening.

At one point of the time, late in the second session, Ashwin had 13% in the fuller zone and 80% in the good length zone. Incredibly, more than half of the 80% was extremely close to the fuller zone too. On the contrary, Harbhajan and Jadeja combined had a dismal 3% in the fuller zone. The numbers changed by the end of the day, but the attitudes didn’t. Shane Warne, an astute reader of the game, mentions how in the 2001 tour, the Australian batsman fretted about Harbhajan’s over-spin that caused the ball to dip alarmingly, enticing and disappointing the batsmen to their outfoxed ends. Ed Cowan’s dismissal today was a classic example, albeit aided by Cowan’s momentary mind-freeze. The ball was tossed by Ashwin higher than the batsman’s eye-line, something most spinners rarely do in these days of heavy bats. That got him the purchase from the pitch that would make any spinner rich with dividends.

If you have a keen proclivity towards technicalities, you may also have noticed how Ashwin was far slower through the air, bowling some deliveries at under 80kph. Harbhajan was quicker and shorter, which on a sluggish Chepauk wicket, meant too many pulls and cuts off the back-foot. Murali Vijay, who was at silly-point, might have felt silly for the greater part of the day with a heavily bruised body tonight for sure; bruises that might be far more revealing than complicated pitch-maps, no pun intended. Great bowlers always hunt in pairs and to my mind, Ojha and Ashwin make a far more compatible pair than Ashwin and Harbhajan. The kind of dream spells that Ashwin conjured up mid-way through the first session and in the first half of the second session could have fetched him a couple more, had some of the other bowlers not been leaking runs like a tattered hose-pipe. Even otherwise, Ashwin had Warner dropped very early by Sehwag, who off-late seems to have outdone his own zone of calmness, slipping into sleep in slips. Ashwin had Clarke caught at silly point too, only for Dharmasena to be left cruelly unconvinced and Dhoni left rueing his call on DRS.

Ashwin has garnered 5-wicket hauls prior to this, but this was the best so far in his short career for two impressive reasons. He got the wickets with genuine off-spin, discarding the unnecessarily flamboyant and rarely effective guile of variety, the other one which like every ‘other one’ doesn’t augur well for the marriage of an off-spinner with line and length. Less keen on experimenting with variety, Ashwin found beautiful lines and lengths all through the day, a day that could have seen him with a 7-for-much-less. I have never been a huge fan of Ashwin, mind you, for he seems too lazy on the field at times, a trait that is discouraging; but with application like today’s I might be persuaded, like a lot of other desperately hopeful Indian cricket fans.