Ravichandran Ashwin is ‘Stealth Aircraft’

The comparison is by Sunil Subramaniam, former Tamil Nadu leftarm spinner and R Ashwin’s coach. Sunil made this comparison while looking at the careers of the two stalwart spinners. “Ashwin is right now the best spinner in the world,” said Sunil, who was the key spinner for Tamil Nadu in the 1990s with a hat-trick in Ranji Trophy against Kerala in Tiruvalla as his career highlight. 

“The jumbo will come at you relentlessly, the stealth will not be seen even by the radar, so it has its shock factor,” explained Sunil and said the Chennai spinner is well on course to catch up with Kumble’s record.

Last week, Ashwin reclaimed the number one spot in Test rankings for bowlers following a career-best match haul of 13 for 140 in the third Test against New Zealand in Indore. Ashwin had taken 27 wickets in the series for a career haul of 220 wickets, the most by any bowler after 39 Tests. Kumble has taken 619 Test wickets in 132 matches with an almost identical strike rate in home and away matches. Of course, the Karnataka spinner has a better record at home but the gulf is not that prominent. Ashwin’s home record is amazing, his 22 Tests in India fetching him 153 wickets while his 17 away Tests got him only 67 wickets. 

From the statistical point of view, Ashwin’s big test from this home run, which includes 10 Tests in the next six months, will be about how to replicate this on the away run or at least bridge the gap. However, Sunil feels it is an unfair comparison at the moment. “You are comparing two players who are at different stages of their career. Anil’s career has finished while Ashwin is only five years into it,” the left-arm spinner said.

Sunil agreed Kumble  depended a lot on the type of wicket because he did not do anything in the air. “But he used the length and width of the crease to trouble the batsmen. At the same time, Ashwin makes use of the air (stealth), apart from his craft and that makes him very effective regardless of the pitch,” Sunil explained.

Ashwin is on ‘top of the mind game’ too, his mental imagination of the situation in the middle making him a tough customer for any batsman, according to Sunil. 

In the initial phase of his career, he was trying many things, but in the last one year, his arc is steady and he is not changing his deliveries much. 

The leftarm spinner rates New Zealand’s Mitchel Santner as a crafty leftarm spinner but he was bowling against batsmen who played spin effectively.  “Santner’s bowling against his own men would have been very successful but against India it was not enough,” he said.

Overall, the wickets in the threematch Test series against New Zealandwere slow turners (Kanpur the slowest), according to Sunil and it required top-class spin bowling like India did to take wickets in a heap.