Ashwin effectively capitalized on the additional bounce and spin available, presenting a formidable challenge for the opposition’s middle-order batters.
His ability to vary his deliveries, maintain an impeccable line and length and deceive the batters makes it exceedingly difficult for them to decipher his intentions and remain firmly positioned at the crease.Remarkably, Ashwin concluded the first Test with exceptional figures of 12/131, marking his best performance away from home, which gave India a massive win by an innings and 141 runs.
During a conversation with commentators Ian Bishop and Samuel Badree following the match, Ashwin shared his thought process while executing his bowling tactics.
“I’m thinking constantly like a batter when I’m bowling. (For) the first few overs, I’m settling into a nice rhythm, I’m looking for different angles, trying to see whether my round-arm ball spins or the up-and-over spins or the flatter trajectory spins. I try and gauge the pitch, I try and gauge the right pace to be bowling with, and then I’m looking at the batter,” Ashwin said as quoted by ESPNcricinfo.
To highlight that, Ashwin explained how he worked out West Indies captain and opening batter Kraigg Brathwaite.
“That’s the next phase for me – where is the head moving, where is he looking to score those runs, is he falling over, is his front leg coming over? Those are the things I’m looking at. Today, when I was bowling at Kraigg Brathwaite – it was something I was working on in the first innings as well – I felt like when the round-arm action was coming in, he was losing his head,” Ashwin added.
When Ashwin referred to “losing his head,” he was alluding to the fact that on the delivery that led to Braithwaite’s dismissal, the batter’s head was leaning excessively towards the off side as the ball landed on a line near the middle stump. This positional imbalance restricted the batter’s available choices.
Although Ashwin didn’t delve into the specific details of his release point during his post-match discussion, he did emphasize the impact of natural variation on the psychological state of batter.
“The moment a batter walks in, you know what he wants to do, and Jermaine Blackwood was a clear example of how (after) Kraigg Brathwaite nicked it off to slip, he was (worried about) the outside edge, wanting to protect it. It’s pretty much (about gauging) very quickly when a batter walks in – whether he wants to drive, whether he wants to sit back. So when you make that early gauging of a situation or a batter, you’ve got a better chance of attacking him up front,” Ashwin signed off.
(With agency inputs)