Regaining his technical acumen and overall gumption with the bat, the veteran could be used to provide critical shield to an underfiring line-up more often. Home and Away.
Under no other head coach in modern times have India approached their Test match game with greater tactical nuance than Rahul Dravid. Having partaken many limited-overs assignments as a coach, including IPL stints, Dravid has honed his grip on the job with a white-ball lense and is replicating the mantra into the format that made him one of India’s finest-ever players.
It doesn’t take much head-scratching to spot his influence on a move: Dravid has repeatedly stressed on the need for left-right combination as a means to attain an edge over oppositions in T20 match-ups, and so when he took to an in-transition middle-order in Tests, he played a left-hand maverick of Rishabh Pant’s quality and aggressive streak at No.5, above Shreyas Iyer at No.6.
Understanding that the new ball responded to a spiteful Dhaka pitch with greater venom – both in relation to the turn and the speed off the deck – Dravid was quick to alter the batting unit for the second innings. Chasing 145 against Bangladesh’s best-ever collective bowling arsenal, he decided to promote Axar Patel to No.4 and sent Jaydev Unadkat as the nightwatchman at No.6. India were still reduced to 74/7 but had by then played out 177 balls with the new cherry.
There were few lucky moments but since the old ball turned less and offered R Ashwin and Iyer more time to make late adjustments, Dravid’s base idea paid rich dividends as the duo struck the remaining 71 in only 17 more overs of play, with Ashwin playing the lead protagonist with a match-winning 42*. It wasn’t Ashwin’s best knock but one of many impactful sojourns in a career where his bowling has, by design, hogged more of the limelight.
Ashwin at No.9 would be an embarrassment of riches. He plays shots that spark comparison with the unmatched elegance of VVS Laxman. He was once seen as a long-term No.6 for that innate batting ability by Virat Kohli as Test captain, a pedestal he was forced to leave due to injuries and an extensive workload. One combined with the other to cut his wings as a batter: until the end of 2016, he averaged nearly 35 over 44 Tests with four hundreds and ten fifties, before the downward spiral began. From the start of 2017 till now, he is averaging shy of 21 from his previous 45 Tests.
In between, however, there has been an encouraging little revival. Having lost his batting self for nearly three years, a period in which his spin partner Ravindra Jadeja took his all-round stocks to the roof and became India’s first-choice Test No.7, Ashwin worked his backs off to regain at least some of that good-old technical precision and gumption ahead of the Australian tour in late 2020.
The average for this phase is still just about inching over 25 from 18 Tests, but there have been knocks of real substance: the epic match-saving 39* at SCG where he battled immense physical strain on the job, the unexpected fifth Test hundred on a raging turner in Chennai, the impressive little counterattack at Southampton in the WTC final, the exceptional 46 on seaming Jo’burg deck, the in-command 61 in Mohali, and the superbly controlled 58 in Chattogram that acted as a prelude to his masterclass in Dhaka.
This is still by no means the player he was pre-2017 but he is still more than capable of a solid grind. Not the player India can replace an injured Jadeja with on a strenuous trip to South Africa but someone who can lengthen the batting and bolster its strength. Home and Away.
It’s this little resurgence that has opened up options for Dravid’s team. India sent Ashwin at No.3 in Nagpur when India had just lost KL Rahul and Australian spinners were finding more bite for their side-cutters, particularly debutant Todd Murphy, with the new ball. That paved the way for another crucial knock off the bat of perhaps India’s finest-ever spinner, making 23 off 62 balls and stitching a partnership of 42 with skipper Rohit Sharma that lasted 104 deliveries.
Following the game, Ashwin confirmed he was sent in as a nightwatchman, and didn’t exactly get a promotion for the innings, when, for once, his 3 am friend and the ever-stoic Cheteshwar Pujara asked for some breather.
The nightwatchman is one of cricket’s gloriously unique and underutilised tactics. It gets mistaken as a shade on specialist batters, or worse, as a means for them to run away from a challenge, when in reality, if properly executed, the nightwatchman can not only help you play out the closing period for the day but also frustrate the opposition bowlers with his presence the following morning.
If the nightwatchman is weak, the opposition is enticed by the prospect of bowling to the best players in the final few minutes of the day or have an early wicket in the offing the next morning: it’s not too imprudent to argue that Jasprit Bumrah’s wicket right at the start of the day of the historic ’36 all out’ uplifted the Aussie morale and gave them momentum that Ashwin had snatched away with a spell of 4/55 that conjured up a 53-run first-innings lead.
When the role of the nightwatchman is emboldened into tactical elements of play and understood in deeper cricketing grammatics, he could be termed the ‘grafter’, someone used not just as your traditional anchor for the periods either side of the close of play but appearing more frequently in the canvas.
A batter from the lower middle-order with a good defensive game promoted up with the intention to shield the vulnerable cogs of a batting unit, delaying their entry points by playing out phases where the run-making is tougher in relation to the ball, the track and the bowling on display. An anchor with lesser weightage about his wicket, sent when the situation could do with a series of dot balls and hard grind above pure run-making, which opens up risks.
In the Indian context, there is no player better placed to do this role than Ashwin, who walks into the side on the richness of his bowling but also has the defensive technical acumen and overall range to withstand quality bowling in tough passages. He has done that time and time again in his career without a designated role assigned to do it more frequently.
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The latter would require a mental adjustment but one would back Ashwin to bridge that gap quicker than anyone. In fact, he would be chuffed by the rigours of the job, having already announced he is seeking more batting opportunities and a bigger chance to make an impact.
Especially at a time when the engine room of Indian batting, their middle order, is not at its peak. Needing greater cover and respite as they approach the back half of their thirties, Cheteshwar Pujara and Virat Kohli wouldn’t mind a grafter enabling their wings in the middle.
Two mature individuals, Pujara and Kohli could do with greater pragmatism in how they set themselves up about their job and the subsequent need for them to be managed with greater care than before. Despite their batting riches, India don’t have immediate replacements for either of the two. It’s important, then, to ease their lives and maximise what they could still offer with the bat.
Ashwin could be the man for it and it has to happen against the new ball, which turns as sharply on a subcontinent track as it would seam or swing overseas with greater incisiveness and wicket-taking threat. The former being crucial in the immediate maths of what could still be an intensely-fought Border-Gavaskar Trophy, the latter pertaining to the cause when India do ultimately travel to England for another World Test Championship (WTC) final in June, a likely rematch versus Pat Cummins & company.
The key scenario that the latter entails is the possibility of an early wicket lost with the new ball and the need for India to provide cushion and cover to their two middle-order greats. Even Pujara, who has built a legacy playing a high-end grafter with deep influence but has witnessed wear and tear engulf his game over the past four years.
Imagine Ashwin withstanding 60 balls at his end with an in-form Rohit Sharma from 10/1. Even a 20-run knock with that role played to perfection will have an impact on India’s fortunes, frustrating the opposition attack while the overall conditions ease, which would allow Pujara and Kohli to approach the crease with greater control and command at the critical starting juncture of their respective innings. Something that might even aid the possibilty for either of the two to regain their best.
It would require India to do away with the persistently risky punt with Shardul Thakur as their fourth seamer and No.8 but that’s the last thing India should feel wary of, considering Ashwin is an all-round upgrade in all conditions.
Openmindedness is key to such moves because, essentially, we’re fortunate to be following a sport that gives room for different elements to combine and leave their impact on the field. The end result isn’t the be-all of this game, it’s the routes to the aim that make it so special, and teams are allowed to embark on different paths to achieve the same glory.
The piling of the white-ball fixtures in an unsustainably busy calendar leaves a distaste in the mouth and can soak the love for the game out of Test match connoisseurs. But perhaps the greatest contribution of a limited-overs-heavy itinerary is the tactical nous it has brought to our sport, spreading its wings to a format whose glorious nitty-gritties make it what it is: the greatest sporting creation of the human mind.
