Wankhede pitch pretty similar to 2012 track: Ashwin

“When we played (against) England last here, the morning of the first day wicket was a bit damp, it spun a little and it was absolutely flat on day 2 and 3. I see very similar traits here. We got out of jail and got to 330-340 the last time we played them here,” said the off spinner after England had ended the day at 288 for 5. “If we could have got one more wicket, we were on the course to do that (it would have been better), but probably we will come out on Friday morning and try and snap couple of wickets and see how quickly we can stall their innings,” said the off-spinner. 

Ashwin seemed satisfied with his post tea spell. “I thought the rewards for that spell came for what I did in the afternoon session because I thought I bowled a really good spell then to (Keaton) Jennings and Moeen Ali and got (Joe) Root out. I thought that was one of the better spells of the day and got rewards for it as soon as I came back in the third spell,” he said. Ashwin said that Indian bowlers failed to capitalise on the early morning moisture available. 

“Generally, Wankhede has been a big bat first and score big kind of a Test match always, so we knew that  it will be up against the odds, generally there is some moisture in the morning and we wanted to capitalise on it and we couldn’t unfortunately. “But the afternoon session wasn’t all that bad because we actually gave 90 odd (79) runs and took only one wicket obviously, but that was a big wicket, we got Root. We thought a couple of wickets together (in the last session) if we could patch it up and try and finish the day with four or five down, be nice, it would be nice to finish on six down actually,” he added. Ashwin said that the dismissal of Joe Root was something on which he had worked a lot. 

“I must say, I reworked that dismissal in my head, because he has got out a lot of times in the slips. In the last three Test matches, we have played, he nicked one in Vizag, I thought he nicked one and it was reviewed over and turned over. But he has got a tendency to nick spinners to the slip cordon, so I was just mentally working it over and it happened,” the satisfaction was palpable.