'I'm Constantly Thinking Like a Batter When Bowling': R Ashwin on How he Plans His Dismissals

Ravichandran Ashwin made a sparkling return after being snubbed for the ICC World Test Championship final last month with a match haul of 12 wickets to star in India’s innings win over West Indies in Dominica. Ashwin took a five-wicket haul in each innings of the series opener to give India a 1-0 lead.

Ashwin opened up on his mindset and how he approaches his bowling after having understood the nature of a given pitch.

“I’m thinking constantly like a batter when I’m bowling,” Ashwin said after the first Test ended inside three days. “The first few overs, I’m settling into a nice rhythm. I’m looking for different angles, trying to see whether my round-arm ball spins, or the up and over spins, or the flatter trajectory spins. I try and gauge the pitch, I try and gauge the right pace to be bowling with, and then I’m looking at the batter.

“That’s the next phase for me – where is the head moving, where is he looking to score those runs, is he falling over, is his front leg coming over? – those are the things I’m looking at. Today, when I was bowling at Kraigg Brathwaite – it was something I was working on in the first innings as well – I felt like when the round-arm action was coming in, he was losing his head,” he added.

Ashwin has now taken 486 wickets in 93 Tests at 23.61 which include 34 five-wicket hauls and eight 10-wicket hauls which is now the joint-most by an Indian alongside the legendary Anil Kumble.

“I’ve played so many Test matches, right? It’s always about getting those one or two dismissals early on in these pitches,” Ashwin said. “One caught the outside edge, one catches the inside edge, and suddenly the team walking in, they’re thinking, ‘Okay, here I am; can I defend, can I go forward, should I go back?’

“The moment a batter walks in, you know what he wants to do, and Jermaine Blackwood was a clear example of how (after) Kraigg Brathwaite nicked it off to slip, he was (concerned about) the outside edge, wanting to protect it. It’s pretty much (realising) very quickly when a batsman walks in whether he wants to drive, whether he wants to sit back. So when you make that early gauging of a situation or a batter, you’ve got a better chance of attacking him up front,” he added.