R Ashwin R Ashwin
“For me, it’s always been standing on a knife’s edge. Most of the time when I have found myself out of the team, it has been because of one bad day or one bad match. I am not sure how many people sit out on the back of one bad match.” Astonishingly, that’s R Ashwin talking about his Test match career last month in an interview to Wisden India. Just imagine if the question had been about his ODI career.
He has been rotated out of the ODI team yet again now, and though he has bagged a county contract, his future as ODI player is definitely a mystery. For a long while now, starting from the captaincy of MS Dhoni, he has often found himself jettisoned from the limited-over formats. His record post 2015 World Cup isn’t flash — 17 wickets in 15 games at an average of 40.58 at an economy rate of 5.6, and his performance in the final of Champions Trophy was a let-down, but here is the thing: It’s too early to give up on Ashwin the ODI bowler.
The economy rate isn’t all that bad though it’s a definite slip down from 4.85 (from before the 2015 World Cup) and an average of 31.93.
But the team management doesn’t obviously think so. They have their reasons — his recent record, the need to try out the other options before the World Cup, and it was Dhoni who made the first move.
Early January 2016, Dhoni dropped him after just two ODIs in Australia. Ashwin managed to drag himself back into the team but hit a major obstacle in the T20 World Cup later that year when in a crucial semifinal against West Indies, Dhoni didn’t even let him finish the quota of four overs. Dhoni would say that it was due to the dew factor but Ashwin hadn’t taken it well. In an press conference in the IPL, which followed the World Cup, he spluttered out his displeasure. “It was very amusing. For the first 12 balls, I bowled, I created a wicket-taking opportunity… I don’t know what he (Dhoni) said.”
Not bowling full quota was an occurrence even in IPL under Dhoni, and it was getting increasingly clear that Ashwin wasn’t the go-to guy for the former captain.
Ashwin’s limited-over career hung on the new captain Kohli, and perhaps, it all came down to the Champions Trophy in England, incidentally the venue of the next 50-over World Cup in couple of years’ time. Prasad, the chief selector, has already spoken about how the Champions Trophy was “best thing” that happened as it was in England.
“That has really opened our mind in many aspects. We know what our real strengths are.” And by extension, the weakness.
Ashwin wasn’t played in the initial couple of games, but was roped in for the match against South Africa. In his mind, as he said in an interview, he saw it as being called up for the big game. He did well but in the subsequent matches against Sri Lanka and in the final against Pakistan, he bled runs at 8.66 per over and 8.37 respectively.
Restricting act
Not only wasn’t it performance expected from the lead spinner but the way he bowled came under criticism. He had turned himself into a restricting act, and that wasn’t how he became world’s leading Test match bowler. It wasn’t a surprise to those who have watched him in the last couple of years. On flat tracks, generally seen in the ODIs, he has not been the attacker he can be.
Undoubtedly, the man who bowled so well in Australia in last World Cup hasn’t been the same. This is where it gets tricky: Is it because of the way he has been treated by the captains that Ashwin has lost confidence in himself in ODIs and tried to mimic the role of Jadeja for instance? The fall was captured by Shane Warne, on air during that final. “The captain and the bowler aren’t in sync” he said, as he talked about how Kohli had a slip but Ashwin wasn’t attacking enough.Or has the way he performed resulted in his captains losing trust with him? It’s a chicken-or-egg situation in some ways, and whatever be the truth, despite the rotational talk by the selectors, there is certainly a question mark about the viability and longevity of Ashwin the ODI bowler.
If India aren’t careful, it can affect the confidence of Ashwin the Test bowler too. He would be playing more Tests in overseas conditions in the near future, and if he doesn’t perform as well as he would like in the initial few games, the pressure can ratchet up.
It’s one thing to slot cricketers into Test and ODI players, and differentiate their specialties, but the best results of that categorization comes when the players themselves view themselves thus, or they have failed in one slot so much that the management makes that decision for them. Self-awareness of their own skills or resignation to reality. With Ashwin, it isn’t clear whether either of the two situations have been reached yet. But the management seems to be in the mood to move on. Or that’s how it appears as of now.
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