He helped me master my rhythm: Ashwin credits former India cricketer
For all his variations, different actions and trickeries with the ball, Ravichandran Ashwin is incredibly accurate. The fact that he has become more successful in Test cricket has got a lot do with his accuracy and precision as a spinner. And Ashwin is well aware of that fact. He revealed that accuracy has been a part of his game for a long time and credited former India cricketer WV Raman for the same.
Ashwin said WV Raman’s discipline had a great influence early on in his career. “W.V. Raman who is known to be a straight forward and extremely disciplined man trained us to throw the ball accurately that should land above the stumps. He also maintained that I stand no chance as a spinner if I cannot hit the top of the bat of a batsman every time I bowled,” Ashwin told Sanjay Manjrekar in ESPNCricinfo’s Videocast.
Ashwin said that Raman, who is currently the head coach of India Women’s Cricket team, had a great role in shaping his rhythm as an off-spinner. “In fact, W.V. Raman helped me master my rhythm. He was the first person who with or without his knowledge, inculcated this self-conscious training inside me.
“He would keep telling me, you’re running 10% slower or you’re running 15% faster. And this put me in a great place when I started playing first-class cricket. And these are the things that I will never forget in my career. But because he was straight forward, a bit dismissive and he could put pressure on people, they started moving away from him.”
“I am good at T20 cricket. If my body holds up, I see a purple patch coming up for me in Test cricket”, says Ravichandran Ashwin when Sanjay Manjarekar, host of ESPNcricinfo, asks him about his future plans.
Ashwin does not favour 4-day cricket. He says, “I am a spinner and you’re taking the fifth day out of the game, you’re taking out a very fascinating aspect of the game.”
Ashwin has one of the best record of bowling with a new ball. “I like a new ball because of the fizz that I get on it. One of my strengths is to be able to put revs on the hard ball as it responds better to the pitch. But I generally like to use the arm ball in first 2 or 3 overs because when you use the arm ball, it challenges both the edges of the batsman and forces him to go across the line which is rendered risky. The others that I use are the floaters that swing, the one that pitches in and goes out or the other one that lands on the seam and gets to go the other way. So these balls become very effective.
“With a new ball I use my middle finger more than the index finger but when I bowl with an older ball, I try and get over the top. Sometimes, I don’t use index finger to go over the top, it is behind and I still put the revs and that’s when the ball actually goes the other way,” he adds.
