Under the SKanner: Ravichandran Ashwin

Ruled out of the IPL this year with a sports hernia injury, Ravichandran Ashwin finally got some much-deserved rest after a long home season. It was a home season where Ashwin ruled the roost, terrorising batsmen and running through oppositions at a canter.Having bagged the international cricketer of the year award for taking 82 wickets against New Zealand, Australia, Bangladesh and England, Ashwin’s heroics had helped India triumph in 10 out of 13 Test matches in the home season and climb to the No. 1 spot in the longest format of the game.

For the last few years, Ashwin as much as captain Virat Kohli, have come to epitomise success and have been the main driving force behind India’s rise. What Kohli does with the bat, Ashwin does with the ball. There can’t be bigger champions to look up to in Indian cricket right now. But a long and sobering Champions Trophy campaign and a chastening defeat at the hands of the arch-rivals Pakistan in the final later, things are looking gloomy all of a sudden for the mercurial off-spinner from Tamil Nadu.

Ashwin suffered a lackadaisical campaign in which he was benched for the first two matches and then was largely ineffective after his return to the side, culminating in a poor performance in the final where he conceded 70 runs off his 10 overs, the most expensive tally for a spinner in this Champions Trophy.

At a time when fans are understandably getting impatient with Ashwin and questioning if he is good enough to continue playing white ball cricket, we take a look at his strengths and weaknesses.

Strengths:

#1 Good wrist position and high-arm action

Ashwin has a pretty high arm action

One of the problems that Ashwin had to contend with in the initial stages was his chest-on action and side-on release which hindered his pivoting in his delivery stride. But that has not served to be a major impediment because of the other strengths he possesses.

His high-arm action and release help him exploit his height to his advantage and extract good bounce from the wicket. Meanwhile, his strong and supple wrists ensure that he gets a good amount of bounce even off his top-spinner.

One of Ashwin’s strengths is that he knows how to utilise this bounce perfectly and dismiss batsmen. Most of his victims in Test matches in the subcontinent are out caught at forward short-leg or leg-slip as batsmen struggle to negotiate the bounce along with the spin.

On a wicket on day four or five of a Test match, the variable bounce as well as spin, can make Ashwin nearly unplayable as he runs through opposition batsmen.

#2 Variations

Apart from the conventional off-spin, Ashwin’s repertoire of variations is his real strengths that lend him a lot of variety. The top-spin for instance, even when flighted, lands on the seam and gives him extra bounce to bamboozle batsmen.

Apart from that, Ashwin also uses the slider while bowling with the new ball. It is like on out-swinger bowled by a medium pacer with the seam pointing to the first slip and the ball drifting away with pace from the right-handed batsmen to induce an edge to the slips.

Apart from these, Ashwin can also bowl the wrong one that goes on straight and the leg-spin that surprises batsmen who are waiting for the off-break.

#3 The carom-ball

The most precious of Ashwin’s variations with which he has surprised many batsmen is his carom-ball. The ball earned its name from its position of release by flicking the middle finger and the thumb, an action resembling hitting a striker in the game of carom.

The ball is squeezed out and flicked at the point of release, with the action of the index finger determining the number of revolutions imparted on the ball. Ashwin had first learnt to bowl this delivery while playing tennis-ball cricket in the streets of Chennai.

The ball after release keeps spinning but often has a flatter trajectory and skids on at a surprising pace thus bamboozling the batsman. Ashwin has used it as a very potent weapon against tail-enders in Test matches.

Often in limited-overs cricket, Ashwin has tried to exploit the rough outside the leg-stump when he is going round the wicket to a right-hander. And when he does get it right, it looks stunning as his dismissal of Hashim Amla which many have compared to Shane Warne’s famous ball of the century.

#4 The traditional off-spinner

Despite his phenomenal record so far, Ashwin is also known as the off-spinner who hardly spins the ball. But this is what makes him so difficult to play when he does spin it outrageously leaving the batsmen flummoxed.

In Test matches, on a day four or five-wicket, he tries to bowl wide of the off-stump to right-handers coming over the wicket. The effort is to bowl a fourth or fifth stump line to exploit the rough outside the off-stump and to get the off-break to spin and bounce into the right-hander.

The spin and bounce make it very difficult for batsmen to play him off the rough and the fielders around the bat are often kept very busy.

#5 A good cricketing brain

Ashwin more often than not has a gameplan against each batsman

Ashwin’s coaches and support staff have always gushed eloquent about his cricketing brain with most believing that he thinks like a captain. With all the variations in his repertoire, it is his ability to use them in a clever way that makes him a special bowler.

He always thinks like a captain, manoeuvring his fielders into good positions and bowling according to his field. It was this special gift of his that had earned the trust of Dhoni when he was the captain to throw the ball to him even during powerplay or the slog overs.

The added advantage also is the fact that he thinks like a batsman as well because he is a good all-rounder with some classical shots in his repertoire with the bat. He has scored some crucial centuries and strung together important partnerships in the lower order in Test matches.

He has improved his batting in leaps and bounds and it is his emergence as an all-rounder that has helped Kohli go in with five genuine bowlers in Test matches.

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Weaknesses

#1 Trying to play a holding role

A defensive mindset doesn’t suit Ashwin

Of late, Ashwin has been trying to play more of a holding role in limited overs cricket where he tries to contain the batsmen and not attack them. This does not suit him well at all as he had ironically stated back in 2014. It may be the case that with the game having swung so decisively in favour of batsmen with even mishits going for boundaries, Ashwin is trying to concentrate now more on being economical than a wicket-taker.

But his role in the team is primarily to be a wicket-taker who can give the side some crucial breakthroughs during the middle overs. As the Champions Trophy showed, wickets in the middle overs are crucial to put a brake on scoring and it was Ashwin’s indifferent form that put India in a spot of bother time and again.

In the absence of wickets to show for himself, Ashwin at times hardly looks like the world class bowler that he is.

#2 Struggles in limited overs cricket on flat pitches

Ravichandran Ashwin failed to deliver on flat tracks in the Champions Trophy

In limited overs cricket on flat decks where there is nothing in the pitch to assist the spinners, Ashwin now looks but a shadow of the bowler that he is in Test matches. This is strange because even before he became a star for the Indian team, MS Dhoni often trusted Ashwin to open the bowling for CSK in the IPL.

What has changed now is that on flat decks Ashwin is very quick to adopt a defensive line to batsmen by going around the wicket. In the absence of much spin off the rough, he strays too often on the batsman’s pads allowing them to milk him easily for runs.

He also does not give the ball much air or bowl slowly for fear of being lofted easily by batsmen. He adopts a flatter trajectory, bowling fast on the batsman’s pads, making it easy to score off him.

Not only does this deter him from picking wickets but also he turns out to be on the expensive side very often, leaking too many runs. This is what happened against Pakistan in the Champions Trophy final when he conceded 70 runs off his 10 overs.

#3 Not a good fielder

Ashwin’s fielding has often left much to be desired

While it is not much of an issue in Test matches, the fact that he is not a good enough fielder often works against Ashwin in the limited overs formats. Ashwin is not quite the electric influence in the field and can be quite laid back and lethargic.

He lacks the agility to cut down the singles and cause run outs when he fields in the inner circle. When he fields in the deep, he is often quite slow off the blocks and has been guilty of dropping catches or failing to prevent boundaries.

While he is a valued Test match all-rounder, his batting is more in the classical mould with an inability to accelerate or improvise which makes his batting skills largely ineffective in limited overs cricket.