Imagine being Virat Kohli. Imagine picking the eleven for the first Test against South Africa on a lush green Cape Town wicket. You would want to pick three pacers, plus an extra batsman, but with a desire to pick one spinner too. The imaginative Ravichandran Ashwin or the steady Ravindra Jadeja – who would you pick?
“You don’t need to ask. That’s a no brainer. If I am the captain, I will not even give the ball to anyone else. I will keep bowling from one end,” said Jadeja, laughing aloud, at the end of day one in Nagpur.
You wonder how Ashwin might respond to this same question.
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On day one, Sri Lanka were placed at 160/4 when Niroshan Dickwella tried to hit Jadeja out of the park. There is certain chutzpah about the keeper-batsman; he is competitive and doesn’t back down, a trait even Kohli has publicly admired.
Yet, the reasoning behind this shot, and consequence thereof, isn’t easily fathomable. At that juncture, their innings had hung in balance. That one slog hit – caught at mid-off by Ishant Sharma – changed the momentum of play.
Until then, a dogged determination marked his innings, mixed with caution and some adventurism.
Earlier on, his partner (and skipper) Dinesh Chandimal had hit Ashwin for a six. ‘Why not hit Jadeja out too’, then, is the obvious inference of Dickwella’s thought process.
The thing about Jadeja, however, is that you simply cannot get him away for runs. There is little variation to play with – the odd one delivered at quicker pace that moves away from the right-hander, or the arm ball that skids into batsmen, pretending to move away but holding its line. For Jadeja, the objective is very simple – you miss, I hit. He could have been a pacer, for his line and length is almost obstinate, like it was for Glenn McGrath. Whether on a green or flat track, could a batsman ever attack him? Whether on a turning wicket or not, can anyone think of hitting out against Jadeja?
Better batsmen than Dickwella have tried and failed. You don’t have to look too far, only until the post lunch session on Friday. Angelo Mathews showed more patience, yet couldn’t muster a stay at the crease long enough. Play, and miss, hit on the pads, and out LBW.
It was the most Jadeja-esque dismissal on a pitch that was custom-made to resemble the harder, bouncier ones India will play on overseas. That Mathews went up for DRS further indicates how he thought there was extra bounce. This stubbornness to not deter from type is what earned Jadeja the lone spinner’s spot during India’s last overseas cycle.
Coming in at Durban, he was lucky to find a dry enough pitch and took 6/138. Ashwin, unlucky to be dropped after Johannesburg, sat out the next five Tests in New Zealand and England.
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Back then, the reasoning from MS Dhoni was simple. If you are going to play a spinner only to support pacers, you might as well play one who will bowl stump-to-stump and dry up runs from one end. Look up their respective figures from that 2013-14 overseas cycle – Jadeja’s economy 2.70 in 7 Tests to Ashwin’s 3.18 in 6 Tests. Marginal, yes, but it doesn’t really prove the concept to be a flawed one.
In contrast to Jadeja’s simplicity, Ashwin has a thinking aura about his bowling, more workman-like. He believes in outsmarting the batsmen, the quality that identifies a true-blue finger spinner.
Just take Chandimal’s dismissal for example. He worked out an angle to go round-the-wicket, dependent on the attacking batsman playing a reverse or slog sweep to get the straighter, lbw angle going. As it turned out, Chandimal attempted the switch-hit and perished.
On a turner, he probably wouldn’t have played that shot. It was in keeping with how Indian spinners had bowled throughout the day – keeping a tight leash on scoring after a great start provided by Ishant Sharma and Umesh Yadav. For a moment, your thoughts wandered away from the emptiness at Jamtha stadium, only to visualise that this was a wicket in some other part of the world.
If such a pitch is rolled out in South Africa, England and Australia over the next 12 months – rest assured it will be – the Indian attack has a ready template to copy. It puts Ashwin’s spell into particular focus. Give him a little assistance from the pitch, and he is lethal.
Yet, the past two seasons playing in sub-continental conditions (in India, Sri Lanka and even West Indies) have been spent in becoming a bowler who can transcend conditions. On a turner, like Chandimal, he would have broached things differently. On a flatter Nagpur track, he had only variations in trajectory and flight to deceive the batsmen with.
It is underlined in the dismissal of Dasun Shanaka – create an angle from round the wicket, drift the ball high enough to fool the batsman into playing inside the line and the ball beats his outside edge but due to lack of turn in the pitch holds its line enough to clip the off-stump.
All the guile in bowling that delivery should come in a master-class manual titled ‘how to bowl off-spin on flat tracks’. “No spin, no seam, no demons in the pitch, (yet) six straight ball dismissals,” cried out Nic Pothas. The Sri Lankan coach has seen his team getting dismantled repeatedly by the Ashwin-Jadeja duo (37 wickets in five Tests this year!).
Even so, it remains a doubt if he would be able to answer that quickly evolving question. Again, if you have to pick just one spinner, whom do you choose? There is no right answer here, mind you. Yet, at some point in 2018, Kohli will have to make this call. After all, it isn’t called a thankless job for no reason.