R Ashwin and his legacy: Off-spinner closes in on immortality with record-breaking feats

He started his cricket as a wannabe top-order batter and accidentally took to bowling, which is where he found his calling. R Ashwin has six Test hundreds, but it is as an off-spinner supreme that he has enthralled the cricketing world. If he isn’t already on the list of all-time greats, he is very, very close to it. Not that these lists matter to him a lot.

His heroics in the first Test against Bangladesh, which ended at his beloved Chepauk on Sunday, have reinforced the widely held belief that even a week past his 38th birthday, there’s plenty of cricket left in him.

On day one of the match at the MA Chidambaram Stadium, he cracked a soulful tune on his way to a breezy century with India in a corner; on day four, he sent Bangladesh packing with a terrific spell of bowling that netted him a 37th five-wicket haul.

By scoring a century and taking a five-for in the same Test for the fourth time, he moved to one behind Ian Botham’s long-standing record. He also became the first cricketer in the history of the game to register 20 50-plus scores and taken more than five wickets at least 30 times. What’s this Ashwin made of?

Of steel and resolve, of course, but also craft and intelligence. Of hunger and drive and ambition. Of a relentless pursuit of excellence, if not perfection. And, recently, of the desire to seek and find happiness rather than focus on numbers and statistics and records and the like.

Few sports are more number-driven than cricket, where success is measured in tangible parameters such as runs scored and wickets taken. If that is the yardstick, Ashwin’s success is phenomenal. Despite batting in the lower order, he is currently 21st in the list of Indian Test run-scorers, and has more hundreds than stalwarts like Chandu Borde, Vinoo Mankad, Dilip Sardesai and his entertaining Tamil Nadu colleague K Srikkanth. His 522 wickets are second only to the legendary Anil Kumble (619) from an Indian standpoint; only seven others have taken more Test wickets worldwide – he went past West Indies’ Courtney Walsh in Chennai.

His all-round role in India’s 280-run romp earned Ashwin the Player of the Match award for the tenth time in 101 Tests. Among Indians, just Sachin Tendulkar (14) and Rahul Dravid (11) are ahead of him; on 10, he has company in the form of Kumble, and current teammates Ravindra Jadeja and Virat Kohli.

These are all staggering accomplishments that are already celebratory, but India historically has been a land that eulogises and deifies batters while refusing to accord the same privileges to bowlers, so Ashwin has attracted a little less laudation, not unlike his hero and role model, ‘Perfect Ten’ Kumble.

There’s no denying the respect, indeed awe, in which Ashwin is held within the contours of the dressing-room, within the framework of Indian and world cricket. Just the fact that his wickets are taken for granted, especially on home turf, is the sort of backhanded compliment Indians excel at.

Bowling is hard work anywhere in the world, be it for a spinner or for a paceman; if picking up wickets in one’s backyard was so simple, wouldn’t more bowlers have done so? It’s not as if Ashwin turns up, rolls his arm over and gets rid of accomplished batters. But if that’s how it appears, then even that is a feather in his cap because one of the hallmarks of champions sportspersons is to make their craft appear easy and straightforward, simple and uncomplicated.

Ashwin heads the club of cricketers who refuse to rest on their laurels and allow their skills to stagnate. Like a scientist hitting the lab, always looking to find new solutions to pesky old problems, Ashwin uses the nets as his experimental arena, constantly adding to his repertoire, seeking new ways to better himself not so much in the quest for wickets as to become more rounded and polished.

To those who have accused him of over-analysing, he has asked why a bowler should be questioned for thinking and talking cricket 24x7 when a scientist isn’t even if he plunges himself into research for the same amount of time.

‘Scientist’ is just one of several tags thrust upon Ashwin – not all of them coming from a complimentary space – but if he is needled by the occasional barb, he has developed a thick enough skin not to be unduly affected by it. Once he dons his cricketing face, the rest of the world ceases to exist for the 38-year-old; he operates in his own bubble, questioning and probing, always driving the opposition to distraction and occasionally having the same impact on his teammates too.

Not naturally the most gifted when it comes to athleticism, Ashwin has had to work harder than most to ensure that he isn’t let down by his body when it comes to the crunch. Because all of that work is done behind the scenes, the outside world isn’t privy to those developments and therefore, perhaps rightly so, is frustrated when he sometimes watches balls roll past him at mid-off or mid-on when you think a dive might have been the more justified action.

But it’s a trade-off the leadership group within the team is comfortable with – he might let a boundary or three slide by, but boy, toss him the ball and that’s nothing if not a distant memory.

Ashwin has embraced yoga in recent times and is working on his mobility while cutting down on strength training in deference to the passage of time and the need to look after his body so that he can extend his career for as long as possible.

He has four Tests at home and five in Australia over the next three and a half months in his immediate crosshairs to build on his legacy, which is already richly overflowing and firmly etched in stone. And, as Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote in Ulysses, he will continue ‘to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.’