Cricket is a cruel game for bowlers. Not only do they get hit to all parts of the park, it is invariably the batters who are credited with a team’s victory. Unless off course you are Ravichandran Ashwin. The Tamil Nadu off-spinner took 27 wickets as India swept aside New Zealand 3-0 in the recently-concluded three-Test series. But then also even his show has been termed ‘Bradmanesque’ in reference to the legendary Australian batsman – Sir Donald Bradman – how tragic life can be for a bowler.
There is also another side to the story. A batsman is called ‘great’ on the basis of a success story in a single series. That never happens in the case of a bowler. It is given, grudgingly though, after six-seven years of hard toil on the field, when the bowler himself probably feels exasperated after not being provided with the same platform that a batsman gets.
So why will not Ashwin be called great? He deserves every right to have the tag of greatness prefixed or affixed with his name. No other bowler in the history of the game has captured 220 wickets in 39 Tests. In fact, Ashwin became only the second bowler in the history of the game and the first in India to reach to the 200-wicket mark in 37 Tests. He probably could have achieved it earlier had not rain washed out a Test in the West Indies a couple of months back.
Let’s face facts. Ashwin has the best strike rate among Indian bowlers and the list includes a bevy of starry names. Ashwin’s strike rate at this point is 51.4… much ahead of two of his nearest competitors – Anil Kumble and Bhagwat Chandrasekhar (both at 66). It may falter as Ashwin plays more games, but at this juncture, with still 10 more home Tests to come, the others really have no chance to match up to the Tamil Nadu off-spinner’s stats.
Even among bowlers, the off-spinner is always considered a journeyman. A leg-spinner is ‘special’ because of the difficult art he masters, a left-arm spinner is always talked about because of his poise and grace (something that another Indian great Bishen Singh Bedi contributed a lot to), but then an offie is always considered ‘common’ because of the simplicity of his trade. Throw a ball to anybody and the chances are that his stock delivery will be the off-break. However, people tend to forget that Ashwin can always be identified with the ‘power of the common man’ as he goes on his way of scripting one success after the other.
The man’s ability to stash away success and failures and use it for future use has been remarkable. Ashwin has always been the first to experiment new things and then discard those if they haven’t helped him. His middle-leg stump theory has now given way to a more outside-the-off delivery and the results are there for everyone to see. Ashwin’s childhood coach Sunil Subramaniam however, is not at all surprised with his student’s characteristics.
“When he first came to me what struck me the most was his (Ashwin) intelligence. His idea of placing the field, trying to guess the batsman’s thoughts, his ability to innovate and experiment, all made him stand out. It made me realise that here was a person who not only loved bowling, but who had a fair idea of what spin is. And for someone starting at 18-19, it was really a big thing,” Subramniam has recently been quoted as saying.
Ashwin’s bad luck is the fact that he has been born in a country which has had so many great spinners, that comparisons are bound to happen. People seldom realise that every spinner has his individual traits and each is different from the other. He may not have the flight and cunningness of an Erapalli Prasanna, the rhythm and poetry of a Bedi, the speed and the unexpectedness of a Chandra or the control and professionalism of a Srinivas Venkatraghavan. But what he has, none of the quartet had, a brilliant strike rate.
In recent times, the comparison between Harbhajan Singh and Ashwin, much like the ‘surgical strike’ incident, has invoked a heated and ugly debate. The Turbanator’s fans are going all out to belittle the Tamil Nadu offie. But even though that great cricket writer, Sir Neville Cardus called the ‘scoreboard a donkey’, facts and figures do tell the real story. In that department, Ashwin has left all the spinners (past and present) in the country far behind.
He is the numero uno… no doubt about that.
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