The interval between the win at Lord's and the third Test at Leeds is a good time to make the case for playing Ravichandran Ashwin. In the aftermath of a victory produced by a four-pronged pace attack, it has the virtue of cutting against the grain of Kohlian common sense.
The main argument for Ashwin is a simple one: he is the greatest spin bowler in the world. He was instrumental in India's success in the home series against England and before that, in their historic away win in Australia. In the World Test Championship final against New Zealand on a seamer-friendly pitch, he took two wickets for very few runs in both innings. Before the Test series began, he took five wickets in an innings for Surrey in a County Championship match. Whether the yardstick is career figures, strike rate, recent Test series, or current form in English conditions, he has an excellent record.
The most telling general criticism of Ashwin is that his 'away' figures are inferior to his 'home' record. This is true. In the six Tests he has played in England, he has taken 12 wickets at an average of 31 runs a wicket. In comparison, Ravindra Jadeja has taken 16 wickets in 7 Tests at an average of 48. Jadeja is more expensive and has a poorer strike rate, but their bowling records in England are much of a muchness. Jadeja has overtaken Ashwin as a batsman in recent years, and he is, by a distance, the better fielder.
It's worth remembering though that as Jadeja the batsman has improved, Jadeja the bowler has faded. In the last two years, Jadeja has taken 29 wickets in 13 Test matches at a strike rate of 69. Ashwin, over roughly the same length of time, has taken 71 wickets in fourteen Tests, strike rate 46. In terms of their career records, Ashwin and Jadeja are similar creatures: bowling all-rounders. Seen through the lens of recent performances, though, Jadeja is playing on the strength of his batting (Ravi Shastri redux?) while Ashwin has evolved into a magnificent bowler who can bat a bit. In the three Tests that Jadeja has played this summer in England, his wickets tally per innings is: 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0.
The argument for Ashwin in England on this tour is not necessarily that he should replace Jadeja; it could just as well be that he should play alongside him. This would mean a bowling attack made up of two spinners and three seam bowlers. This was the team that Kohli went with in the WTC finals; India's defeat at the hands of an all-seam Kiwi attack seems to have tipped the balance in Kohli's mind against the two spinners option. It's worth repeating here that Ashwin bowled well in the WTC final and took four wickets in the match.
So, one plausible case for Ashwin consists of showing that he is likely to be more valuable to the side than India's fourth seamer. That we're trying to choose between the world's greatest spinner and India's fourth choice seamer is either a tribute to India's fast bowling riches or a comment on the seaming monoculture created by English conditions and the Dukes ball, but the choice seems to exist, and the case for Ashwin is not self-evident, it has to be made.
First, the heroics of the Mohammad Shami-Jasprit Bumrah partnership are unlikely to be repeated the next time England gets down to India's lower order. Having 8, 9, 10 and 11 manned by four No. 11 batsmen is not a gamble that's going to work most times. If Root and company hadn't collectively lost their heads, the chances were that India's tailenders would have played to their averages and folded for very few runs. As it was, Shami and Bumrah batted doughtily but the odds are that they're unlikely to do it again. Ashwin would be a more reassuring sight walking in at the fall of the sixth wicket than either Shami or Sharma. It's worth remembering that Ashwin made a Test hundred against this English team just six months ago in Chennai.
Secondly, is India's fourth-choice seamer more likely than Ashwin to make inroads into England's batting line-up in the next Test at Leeds? Much, of course, will depend on ground conditions, but Ashwin has a peculiar talent that doesn't depend on the nature of the pitch at Headingly or elsewhere: his short way with left-hand batsmen. He is the only bowler in the history of Test cricket to have dismissed left-handers more than 200 times, and on average, they have cost him less than 20 runs per wicket.
Michael Vaughan, former England captain, Test Match Special commentator, suggests in an article that England's team for the Headingley Test might feature five left-hand batsmen: Rory Burns, Dawid Malan, Moeen Ali, Sam Curran and Jimmy Anderson. To play Ashwin, scourge of southpaws, would be the clever thing to do. Burns would probably twist himself into a corkscrew trying to second-guess him and Malan, playing for his place in England's top order, would be confronted by Ashwin challenging both edges of his bat from around the wicket. Not to play Ashwin because India got out of jail at Lord's thanks to England's mental meltdown would be the predictable, conservative, unimaginative thing to do.
Given the team management's preferences, though, Ashwin is unlikely to make the team. In February 2019, Shastri was touting Kuldeep Yadav as India's first-choice spinner overseas. "He plays overseas Test cricket and he gets five wickets, so he becomes our primary overseas spinner. Going ahead, if we have to play one spinner, he is the one we will pick..." When Shastri told the world that Yadav would be picked ahead of Ashwin on tour, Yadav had played six Tests and taken 24 wickets. Ashwin (then) had played 65 and taken nearly 350.
Once Yadav slipped out of the reckoning, Jadeja replaced him as India's default spinner abroad. After the Australian series was won earlier this year, Ashwin said in an interview that had Jadeja not been injured, he wouldn't have made the playing XI. It is a remarkable thing that a slow bowling genius who has taken 413 wickets at an average of 24.56 and a strike rate of 52.40 has to make way serially for a novice wrist -spinner, a left-arm spinner whose bowling prowess is on the wane, and now, a fourth-choice seamer. When Shane Warne did terribly in India, the Australian team management didn't replace him with a fourth seamer, he was as integral to Australia's bowling attack as Glen McGrath was. Not coincidentally, Warne's best-known motto is, 'If it seams, it spins.'
One explanation for Ashwin's struggle to nail down a place is that Virat Kohli and Shastri have a template for the modern Indian cricketer and Ashwin doesn't fit the mould. Their beau ideal is someone like Hardik Pandya: all-round athletic ability plus laddishness. Ashwin is as intense a cricketer as any player who has worn the India cap. (He's also wonderfully funny: please watch his happy-hilarious post-mortem of the Lord's Test with R. Sridhar, India's fielding coach.) But one of the lads, he isn't; he is just a great bowler at the height of his powers.
There's a perverseness to the argument that a slow-bowling maestro should sit out lush pitches and overcast skies. Only in Test cricket can you taste the drama of a genius bowling against the ambient odds - like Muttiah Muralitharan and Warne managing a green top, or Bishan Bedi and Ashwin making the new ball talk for them. It's a cricketing tragedy that Kohli, who hasn't earned his keep as a Test batsman for two years now, should keep Ashwin, the Dagar of the long game, from bowling for India.
Mukul Kesavan is a writer based in Delhi. His most recent book is 'Homeless on Google Earth' (Permanent Black, 2013).
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