COLOMBO: Part of the reason India hadn’t won a series in Sri Lanka since 1993 is that their primary spinners had a largely peripheral influence on the series—much of sporadic bursts of brilliance that sustained spells of destruction, like Harbhajan Singh’s 10-wicket effort in Galle 2008 or Anil Kumble’s eight-wicket showing in 1993.
Resultantly, in 10 Tests, Harbhajan sweated for only 26 wickets, each costing him nearly 49 runs. Likewise, Kumble laboured for 30 wickets at 44.63 wickets. A variety of factors must have factored their rather lackadaisical performances, ranging from the nature of pitches—in late 90s, they were notoriously slow and sluggish—and the quality of batsmen in the ranks, men like Aravinda de Silva, Sanatha Jayasuriya, Marvan Atapattu and the later Mahela Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakkara. And let’s not discount the unfashionable Thilan Samaraweera, a thorn in India’s flesh with 652 runs at an average of 130.40 in seven matches.
Conversely, India’s supporters would argue that Muttiah Muralitharan had a wretched average of 45.45 in India. In general, batsmen of the sub-continent are ordained to dominate the turning ball, those with slithering toes and supple wrists, breastfed on spinners.
But in a pleasant digression from the past, Ravichandran Ashwin and Amit Mishra have accomplished what their loftier predecessors couldn’t. In two matches so far, they have accounted for 29 of a maximum 40 Sri Lankan wickets—Ashwin with 17 at 16.35 and Mishra 12 at 12.75. That’s close to three-fourths the wickets fallen.
Ashwin, especially, has been a recalibrated force. Since being benched in England under Mahendra Singh Dhoni, and seemingly weary and burdened, Ashwin has morphed into Virat Kohli’s first-choice weapon of destruction. No other piece of stat reinforces his value than the number of times he has dismissed the now-retired Kumar Sangakkara—four in four—the first instance when Sangakkara has been so constantly troubled by the same bowler. Batsmen of his qualities will generally find a way out of strife.
The deliveries that nipped out Sangakkara were all his stock deliveries, the off-break, but what beguiled him was Ashwin’s drift, a feature of his recent spark. Sangakkara rates him as a cerebral bowler, a trait that was often attached to the great man himself. “We talked of ways to counter him. We talked about players going down the wicket, trying to sweep. But he has the weapons in his repertoire to counterattack. When someone starts sweeping, he will bowl a bit quicker, fuller and straighter at the stumps. When it turns you will see him vary his pace and try to get it straighter. His seam position is fantastic. He seems to be thinking all the time. So it was a great challenge to play against him,” he said, bracketing him alongside the likes of Zaheer Khan, Wasim Akram and Graeme Swann as the toughest bowlers he has faced.
Unlike in the past, Ashwin is not over-complicating his craft; nor over-expending; but instead has refocused on the basic things, a return to simplistic and more conventional methods, like varying his flight and dip, and not fixated with his variations, which he now uses judiciously. And Sri Lanka simply haven’t found a way to unsettle him, apart from maybe Dinesh Chandimal during his freakish knock.
In Mishra, they have an entirely different proposition, an old-fashioned leg-spinner who is unabashed to flight the ball, slower through the air and befool batsmen with drift and turn. The dismissals of Jehan Mubarak in the first innings and Chandimal in the second give ample evidences of his conventional values. And as significantly, he has been miserly—leg-spinner are generically derided for their propensity to feed boundary balls—giving away just 2.85 runs an over and striking once in every 27 balls. It’s not far away from the situation that if Ashwin doesn’t get you, Mishra will.