How Ravichandran Ashwin has been criminally underutilised in T20Is
Between August 2017 and October 2021, Ravichandran Ashwin did not play a single T20I for India in almost 1500 days - four years, three months and 22 days to be exact.
In this period, India utilised ten different spinners in the 20-over format. Five of them were handed their debuts in the format - Rahul Chahar, Krunal Pandya, Mayank Markande, Varun Chakravarthy and Washington Sundar.
This was also the KulCha era of Indian spin bowling, so at least Ashwin's long absence in T20Is is understandable. Very few Indian spin pairs have been as consistent and played off each other as effectively as Kuldeep Yadav and Yuzvendra Chahal, except perhaps for Ashwin-Jadeja. But we will get to that later.
In the four years Ashwin didn't play T20Is for India, he did play the IPL. Here is how he fared in each IPL campaign during this period:
That's 45 wickets in 198 overs across 56 matches at an economy rate of 7.6. While the stats don't do full justice to Ravichandran Ashwin as a T20 bowler, let us use them as a basis. Here's how the five T20Is debutants fared in the same competition during this period:
While they have all been good in their own way, none of them have been that good for Ashwin to be sidelined from the T20I fold. But India experimented anyway, and in the process lost out on a valuable T20 bowler.
Ravichandran Ashwin's rousing comeback to T20I cricket
In the five games since he has come back into the T20I side, Ashwin has taken nine wickets at an economy rate of 5.27. Even if they came mostly against teams like a less-than-full-strength New Zealand and newcomers in the T20 World Cup, those are still impressive numbers.
That makes the decision to drop Ashwin in the first two games of the World Cup even worse in hindsight.
Kohli keeping out Ashwin is looking stupider by the minute .
Would the inclusion of Ashwin in the games against Pakistan and New Zealand have taken India into the semi-finals of the T20 World Cup? We cannot know for certain. Was Ravichandran Ashwin the missing piece of the puzzle that could have prevented India's early exit from the tournament? There is no knowing for certain.
However, Ashwin's inclusion certainly wouldn't have hurt the team's chances of making the knockouts. That's because Ashwin is the exactly the kind of bowler India missed.
Jadeja is an excellent T20 bowler, and he bowls a tight line, and holds one end up. And Chakravarthy is a far better bowler than his numbers suggested in the tournament. However, together, they lacked something that Ashwin paired up with any one of them could have offered. That is the ability to take wickets, or rathe, the ability to try and take wickets.
Man has played 5 matches since his comeback and has went for more than 6 an over only once and has picked atleast one wicket in every match. 9 wickets at 13.3 s.r. and 5.25 economy so far. GOAT stuff from Ashwin. https://t.co/Ja1IZh7iKJ
Ravichandran Ashwin is a bowler who tries to take a wicket off every single delivery. He is a bowler who always looks for a wicket off his next delivery, no matter if he has just bowled a maiden or hit for a six the previous ball.
He experiments constantly, and almost every single delivery you can see him try something new and beat the batter. Ashwin does that even against batters who are not adept at playing spin and ones who would have gotten out to even his stock deliveries.
That has its downsides too, as Ashwin can get hit for runs. Sometimes that makes it frustrating to watch him too. Sometimes it looks like he is simply trying too much. Especially when he is bowling alongside someone like Jadeja who simplifies things to their absolute basics.
However, that is exactly why Ashwin belongs in the T20I side. With just 20 overs to play, batters are always going to go berserk at the end. Edges are going to fly to the third man boundary. Even the best seam bowlers are going to miss the yorker a few times.
With that being an inevitablity, there needs to be at least one bowler in the middle overs who likes to attack - who wants to attack, who needs to attack.
"He's (Ravi Ashwin) a wily bowler, he's got great control of his line and length and he just doesn't bowl bad balls. I don't remember him bowling me any bad bowls throughout his career. He's just very Difficult to get away, you know. His control was outstanding." - Martin Guptil
I don't mean to say that Ravichandran Ashwin is undroppable, and should play every game for Team India in every format. No single player is, or should be. But based on what he can bring to the team in terms of wickets and mindset, Ashwin should be looked at as more than just a red-ball bowler.
At the very least, Ravichandran Ashwin should play a few T20I games every year; he perhaps deserves to.