Stats: Ravichandran Ashwin becomes highest Test wicket taker of 2015

R Ashwin has destroyed South Africa’s batting line-up in this current test series

Ravichandran Ashwin became the highest Test wicket taker for this year, after taking the wicket of Jean-Paul Duminy on Day 3 of the third test between India and South Africa at Nagpur, thereby overtaking England’s Stuart Broad, who has taken 51 wickets in 13 matches for England this year.

Ashwin, who has played only 8 matches, has more wickets than Broad now in this year, and will increase his lead over the Englishman even more by the end of the current series. R Ashwin is by the far best off-spinner in the world right now, also becoming the fastest Indian to take 150 wickets in test cricket earlier this year, during the 1st test at Mohali.

2015 has been the best year for Ashwin, as can be seen from a breakdown of his yearly performances in test matches.

Year	Matches	Wickets	Average	No. of 5 wicket hauls	Best figures in an innings
2011	4	26	24.80	2	6/47
2012	8	37	37.75	3	6/41
2013	7	41	22.51	4	7/103
2014	4	10	43.80	0	3/72
2015	8	55	18.07	6	7/66

In this series, he has taken more wickets than anybody else. He has taken 24 wickets in 3 matches so far with three 5-fers and one 4-fer. Next to him is India’s Ravindra Jadeja who has taken 16.wickets so far in three matches.

Player	Team	Matches	Wickets
R Ashwin	India	3	24
R Jadeja	India	3	16
Imran Tahir	South Africa	3	12
Simon Harmer	South Africa	2	10
Amit Mishra	India	2	7

Here is a table that includes all other nine bowlers barring Ashwin who have taken the most wickets this year in test cricket.

Player Name	Country	Matches	Wickets
R Ashwin	India	8	55
Stuart Broad	England	13	51
Yasir Shah	Pakistan	7	49
James Anderson	England	11	46
Mitchell Starc	Australia	11	46
Dhammika Prasad	Sri Lanka	9	41
Josh Hazlewood	Australia	10	38
Nathan Lyon	Australia	11	37
Rangana Herath	Sri Lanka	8	33
Moeen Ali	England	12	32

Here is a table that shows top 4 India’s highest wicket takers in tests this year.

Player Name	Matches	Wickets
R Ashwin	8	55
Amit Mishra	5	22
R Jadeja	3	16
Ishant Sharma	6	13

Here is a table that shows how R Ashwin has taken wickets of batsmen so far in his test career. In his test career of 5 years, he has taken 169 wickets in 31 test matches.

Mode of dismissal	Wickets
Bowled	32
Caught	74
Caught behind	12
LBW	44
Stumped	7
Hit wicket	0

Here is an another table which shows how many times Ashwin has taken wickets of top order batsmen, middle order batsmen and tailenders.

Type of batsman	No. of wickets
Top order (1-3)	56
Middle order (4-7)	57
Tail (8-11)	56