Ravichandran Ashwin 500 Test wickets: IND v ENG third Test begins with great expectations

R. Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja. Ashwin had captioned this image 'Test match prep ✅✅ @imjadeja'. (Image source: X/@ashwinravi99)

When R. Ashwin had Joe Root caught at backward point off what can at best be termed a terribly agricultural hoick on the fourth day of the second Test, a famous milestone appeared imminent. Root was England’s third second-innings wicket to fall in Visakhapatnam. India needed seven more for victory, Ashwin was just one away from breaching the 500-wicket club in Test cricket. Surely, it was just a matter of time?

Actually, it wasn’t. India did grab the seven wickets required to square the series, but hard as he tried, No. 500 proved elusive for the crack off-spinner. Between getting rid of Root and Jasprit Bumrah cleaning up Tom Hartley, Ashwin wheeled away for 72 deliveries without success. With each passing delivery, he must have gotten more anxious – not so much wondering if the next wicket would come at all, but eager to get the moment out of the way and then knuckle down to business all over again – but it wasn’t to be.

Barring the extraordinary, Ashwin will get to that landmark this week, at the newly christened Niranjan Shah Stadium in Rajkot, in his 98th Test. That will make him the second quickest in history to 500 Test wickets, behind only the legendary Muttiah Muralitharan and ahead of such luminaries as his hero, Anil Kumble, and Shane Warne, the Wizard of Oz. The 37-year-old will become just the ninth bowler to touch that gargantuan number, a tribute to his skills, longevity, perseverance and the ability to outsmart and outwit batsmen of all calibre.

R Ashwin: Great expectations

The ongoing India-England five Test series is proving to be a kind of tonic for Test cricket in the subcontinent. After Ollie Pope's Bazball-affirming 196 in the first Test, Yashasvi Jaiswal's double century won the game for India and made the young player from Mumbai/Uttar Pradesh a household name in the country. Jasprit Bumrah's nine wickets for just 91 runs across two innings in the second Test made things more even exciting. The crux: What was supposed to be a spinners' game was overtaken by a pacer with a mean reverse swing; proof that Test matches can now surprise deeply and entertain greatly. With the Third Test starting in Rajkot today, anticipation is again very high - R. Ashwin, who had taken 499 wickets at the end of the second Test against England on February 5, 2024 - has been a wicket away from a mind-boggling 500th Test wicket for 10 days. India have opted to bat first in Rajkot, so the wait will hopefully last another day or two - but what a way to start the game.

From #CaptainMiller to Ash Anna pic.twitter.com/N1Z0hma6r4

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— Rajasthan Royals (@rajasthanroyals) February 15, 2024

R Ashwin & records

To Ashwin, 500 won’t be an end in itself. During a long and illustrious career of the kind Ashwin has enjoyed, milestones are bound to be surpassed, landmarks reached and left behind. The wickets he takes are a byproduct of the execution of his craft, in which he takes tremendous pride. Ashwin is first a thinker, then a doer, and while he has often been ‘accused’ of over-thinking, that hasn’t stopped him from investing heavily with his mind, both when he is out in the middle plotting a batsman’s downfall or when he is sitting in his Chennai home, watching and observing and studying video footage for countless hours looking for the one chink in a batsman’s armour that he can exploit.

By his own lofty standards, the ongoing series against England hasn’t begun too well for Ashwin. Expected to be the lynchpin of the Indian attack, as he has been for more than a decade on home soil, he has had to play second fiddle to the irrepressible Bumrah, which is no shame considering the level at which the paceman has been operating. But what must be particularly galling for Ashwin is that he has been outbowled by Hartley, the left-arm spinner who made his debut in Hyderabad and already boasts 14 wickets in two Tests, just one shy of Bumrah and five more than what Ashwin has managed.

Equally, Ashwin must be kicking himself for not coming up with effective counters to the unconventional methods England’s batsmen have employed. Coming into this five-Test showdown, no one was under any illusions about what England’s tactics would be. Firmly sold on the ‘Bazball’ approach that had brought them 13 wins in their preceding 18 Tests, England would continue to remain unorthodox, with a distinct focus on sweeping and reverse-sweeping. How India, and especially Ashwin, would react was what everyone was waiting with bated breath to see.

It won’t be an exaggeration to say that neither Ashwin nor India have responded with telling effect. If anything, India’s spinners have seemed clueless at various stages when England have counter-attacked, not least when Ollie Pope blazed his way to 196 in Hyderabad and overturned a 190-run first-innings deficit into a magical 28-run heist. Ashwin had match figures of six for 194 in Hyderabad, but he needed 50 overs for those six wickets and conceded nearly four runs an over. Unthinkable? Well, it was to get worse. In the first innings in Visakhapatnam, he leaked 61 in 12 wicketless overs, only the sixth time he had failed to take a wicket in an innings in India.

Given his eye for numbers, it’s unlikely that these anomalies would have escaped Ashwin’s attention. Over the years, he has thrived when pushed to a corner, retreating to the anonymity of the nets, away from probing eyes, to work relentlessly on his craft. Unlike several others who are content with working on their strengths and sticking to what they are good at, Ashwin has left no stone unturned in his bid to become more potent, to add more strings to his bow, to develop newer tricks so that he can stay one step ahead of the opposition. Among the few cricketers not afraid to experiment, Ashwin has brushed aside criticism with typical nonchalance bordering on the arrogant, convinced that he isn’t answerable to anyone outside his immediate cricketing circle and using his huge success to prove the efficacy, indeed inevitability, of his experimentation.

R. Ashwin 500 wickets prep

It goes without saying that Ashwin wouldn’t have allowed the grass to grow beneath his feet in the week-long break between the second and third Tests. He would have recharged mentally, of course, but where others refresh by not thinking about the game at all, Ashwin operates in the exact opposite way. As someone who relishes being his captain’s go-to bowler in home conditions, he must be stung to the quick at how things have panned out in this series – nine wickets at 36.33, an economy of 4.08 and a strike-rate of 53.33 are passable but hardly ‘Ashtronomical’ – and will be itching to get his own back over the next three matches.

If things go to plan, Ashwin will play his 100th Test in Dharamsala. That will be a wonderful accomplishment for a bowler, especially a bowler who was an all-format regular for the first half of his Test career which kicked off in 2011. Deemed superfluous to the white-ball scheme of things post the 2017 Champions Trophy in England, Ashwin made dramatic comebacks to the T20 World Cup side (2021 and 2022) and the 50-over World Cup (2023) though now, his international limited-overs career is certainly finished. He has only Test cricket to showcase his wares to a global audience, and while he might feel that that world is not enough, it can still be his oyster. Just how much so will become apparent over the next four weeks.