Ravichandran Ashwin named in Wisden’s Test team of the decade

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Almost instantly after he was chaired around Delhi’s Feroz Shah Kotla Stadium in the winter of 2008, Anil Kumble was whisked away into the press conference to throw light over why he –– the second greatest leg-spinner in the world in terms of wickets –– chose to suddenly retire from international cricket when he was so close to Shane Warne’s Test record.

There, in a room packed with journalists, Kumble was asked about a long-running joke about his bowling; that India’s greatest spinner never did spin the ball. Kumble laughed and said: “At this moment I would like to thank [everyone] who asked me to bowl leg-spin. Although I am still trying to find out how I can bowl leg-spin.”

Before the wave of giggles in the room ebbed, Kumble had his serious face on. “I had to go through a lot of things in the early part of my career,” he said. “People questioning my ability, my fitness, my form, my bowling and the effectiveness of my bowling. I had to go through that then, now right at the end of my career, and even in the middle.”

An entire decade has passed since, but India, and the small army of men who manage its cricket team, is yet to learn to fully appreciate its non-batting heroes. Ravichandran Ashwin is nowhere near the end of his career. But the country’s premier off-spinner will be hard-pressed to disagree with Kumble’s sentiment of his ability, his fitness, his form, his bowling and the effectiveness of his bowling being questioned in the beginning and now in the middle of his career.

Ashwin wasn’t picked for any of the three Test matches that India played away from home in 2019. Yet, despite the lack of momentum and in his very first Test appearance this year, he equalled the world record for scalping 350 Test wickets in record time (66 Tests), matching the father of all record-breakers, Sri Lanka’s Muttiah Muralitharan, the greatest off-spinner and highest wicket-taker of all time.

That’s not the end of it. Ashwin hasn’t played One Day Internationals or T20Is for India since 2017. In his last press conference of 2019, he even spoke about the effect the snubs have had on him, and why he now stays away from watching the game when he isn’t playing it. Yet, despite not featuring in two formats for nearly a third of the decade, Ashwin completed the Twenteens with the most combined international wickets with 564 – 27 more than England’s James Anderson.

Greatness seldom goes unrecognised. Last week, Ashwin was named in Wisden’s Test team of the decade – the only Indian in the team apart from Virat Kohli and, significantly, the only spinner in the eleven. Australia’s off-spinner Nathan Lyon had the greater number (380 scalps to Ashwin’s 362, albeit in 20 more games) and possibly the greater storyline – he had begun the decade as a member of the Adelaide Oval’s groundstaff and finished it as the country’s finest offie. For that, and more, Lyon is widely called the GOAT (greatest of all time). But according to Wisden, the real GOAT remains tethered somewhere in India’s backyard.

At 33, Ashwin’s career is far from over and could well last deep into the upcoming decade. If it does – and he isn’t sidelined by injuries or the team management – Ashwin would certainly have surpassed Harbhajan Singh (417 wickets) to become India’s greatest off-spinner and possibly also succeed Kumble (619 wickets) as the country’s highest ever wicket-taker.

Only the biggest records will help put the meaning of Ashwin in perspective for a country steeped in batsman worship. They might even take Ashwin into the evening of his career with the recognition and appreciation he didn’t receive in the beginning, and now in the middle.

Three defining spells in Tests

3/81 & 6/47 (Delhi, 2011): On Test debut, Ashwin took nine wickets against the West Indies to win the first of his numerous Man of the Match awards. He would end the three-match series with 22 wickets and the first of his seven Player of the Series awards too.

6/46 & 4/114 (Galle, 2015): The matter of who was India’s premier off-spinner was sorted in Sri Lanka. Ashwin and Harbhajan Singh featured together only for the fifth time in Test cricket, which eventually finished with Ashwin taking 10 wickets to Harbhajan’s 1. The latter never played Test cricket again.

6/81 & 7/59 (Indore, 2016): Ashwin’s best bowling figures in an innings and across a match came against New Zealand on a batting wicket. On the same pitch that Virat Kohli and Ajinkya Rahane had added 365 runs for one wicket, Ashwin dismissed 13 Kiwi batsmen for 140 runs.