In the grand pantheon of India’s spinners, Ravichandran Ashwin will occupy a rare place himself. There are wizards and sorcerers, artists and artisans, but few have explored the craft with the zeal of a scientist, the curiosity of a child or the industry of a sculptor like Ashwin. He was the greatest off-spinner his country had ever seen — and among the best the world had produced, standing shoulder to shoulder with Muttiah Muralitharan and Jim Laker, Harbhajan Singh and Ashwin’s own contemporary Nathan Lyon.
His greatest legacy – apart from the numerical peaks – is how he re-established a lost mystery in the art form. He didn’t glamorize the field like Shane Warne did leg spin, or romanticize it like Muralidharan, or revolutionize it like Saqlain Mushtaq, but he reinvigorated the spirit in off-spin bowling, made it a riveting spectacle again, liberated it. Suspicious second and fixing the mystery, its range and scope expanded, more layers tessellated, embellished with post-modern syntax and vocabulary. So much so that he is the renaissance man of off-spin. There will be a clear demarcation of what off-spin was like before and after Ashwin.
He was a classicist in the neo-classical era; He was also a neo-classical among classicists. He wowed connoisseurs with his seductive flights and devilish drops; His amazing skill points, the ball side-spun and over-spun. He trapped the batsmen in both simple and complex setups. He drew the envy of new-age spin tyros with his forefinger flicking practice based on his expertise in using different grips. He bowled the seam-up as expertly as he deployed the square seam.
After Shane Warne’s departure, no bowler has been as different as Ashwin. By that measure, he was one of the core of the game, an irreplaceable act.
He was the quintessential Indian spinner, assembled with terrifying symmetry. He mixes Bishan Singh Bedi’s grace with Irapalli Prasanna, Anil Kumble’s brain and heart and Harbhajan’s chutzpah. The fact that he batted best and could break into the team as an all-rounder was a dimension that was overshadowed by the vastness of his achievements with the ball.
Facing Ashwin was like entering a labyrinth. There were differences within differences, traps within traps, subtleties within subtleties. Like Glenn McGrath, he often foxed the visiting team’s best batsman. He bowled Joe Root seven times, Steve Smith eight and Kane Williamson five. The left-handed sages called the devil in him. Ben Stokes (12), David Warner (11), Alastair Cook (9) and Kumar Sangakkara were his top victims four times in the space of 23 balls in Sri Lanka’s farewell series.
There was ubiquity about the out – bowling from around the stumps, drifting inwards, landing suddenly and deceptively, a few meters behind the batsman’s guess, the kiss of the edge, the snap of the stumps. A heavy dose of them will include any highlight reel tribute.
But Ashwin’s right-hand duel was equally legendary. Two dismissals illustrate his command of his craft. One was Williamson at Kanpur in 2016, a ripping offbreak from good length territory after two over tees of length. The other was a straight that would have nailed Smith in Adelaide in 2020, plotted months in advance with video analyst Prasanna Agoram and polished to perfection in the intervening months.
Method before magic
He studied Batman rigorously and dissected their weaknesses and strengths. Sangakkara doesn’t get LBW to off-spinners or Smith is more vulnerable off-stump than on his pads, despite the massive overhaul. He once explained his thought pattern in this paper: “My preparation is whether I can disrupt the batsman’s tempo. Will Smith go off-stump after 10 balls or 12 balls. Or Joe Root, when you turn the stumps in the first eight balls, he reverses you once.” will do. There are two ways of skinning it, do I want to prevent the root from being reversed, or do I want to reverse or remove the root?”
The batsman’s deconstruction does not end here. “It depends on where Root is in his career, how confident he is. Did he score a century in the first two Tests? Is he in a confident place, coming from Sri Lanka with a mountain of runs? So I will try to plan because I need that early blood,” he explains.
Some misinterpreted this as overthinking. But Ashwin stuck to his essence. “I come from a school where before I break a particular method, I want to make sure it doesn’t stick and break. Why is this happening? That’s the question people fail to recognize. I am addressing before I believe that it should be addressed,’ he elaborated.
He constantly fiddled with his action, experimenting with release points, grips and seam position. He picked up new moves from many younger spinners, keeping his sensibilities open to the constant evolution of the game. He was satisfied with his body of work, but kept the windows of perception open to add new dimensions.
It was as if bowling spin was a spiritual, timeless pursuit. As he emerges from his four-step walk of the run-up, arms twirling, a picture of calm focus on his face, he doesn’t look as philosophical as his country’s greatest match-winner in the red ball. Finding the deeper meaning and purpose of your profession.
The journey produced exemplary moments, victories and triumphs. He is India’s second-highest wicket-taker in Tests, has won the man-of-the-series award in Tests, and is the second-highest five-wicket taker in an innings behind Muralitharan. The average (24) and strike rate (50) are the best of any Indian spinner of any era, making him immortal in Indian cricket. But his greatest legacy is that he got the soul back into off-spin bowling, at a time when it was mired in dubious actions and mystery-fixation, making it a fun spectacle again. He only managed to take a wicket on the trip.
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