Spinning the same record in Ranchi
India desperately needed a wicket and Ashwin had to step up.
RANCHI: R ASHWIN was staring at a giant screen in JSCA International Stadium on Sunday afternoon again — just as he was 24 hours earlier. This time, however, he was not batting. He, surrounded by his teammates, and Joe Root were anxiously looking at the screen.
At this point, Ashwin had already grabbed, literally, the new ball from Rohit Sharma, and made an immediate impact, sending both Ben Duckett and Ollie Pope back. Zak Crawley and Root had piled on for a while with the lack of bounce on the surface and Indian spinners being rather generous bowling too many half-volleys. From 19/2, the visitors had taken their score to 65/2, extending the lead past 100.
India desperately needed a wicket and Ashwin had to step up. He had taken just one wicket in the first innings, and had realised the need to “rewire”. For the kind of spinner he is, Ashwin found it difficult to extract spin on the surface. In fact, his load-up was different from what he did in the first innings and had to use a bit of variations. He was bowling with the seam facing square leg, even undercutting a little to extract more side spin of the surface.
“I am someone who comes from the top and likes the ball to drop on the pitch. Somehow when I come to the Eastern part of the country I find that there is not enough bite out of the surface. The bounce is literally around shin height if I can say that, so had to bowl a lot of side spin, had to hammer into the pitch for the first part of the spell and later from the other side I felt there was a little bit more purchase. Had to rewire and it’s a mental switch I had to make,” he would later explain in a chat with the broadcasters.
And the change worked. He came around the wicket and the ball drifted and dipped a lot more than Root expected. As a result, he was caught falling over when the ball pitched just enough in line and turned sharply to hit Root low on the pads. The umpire did not give it out, but Ashwin convinced Rohit for a review. And it was that decision they were all anxiously waiting for.
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