Ravichandran Ashwin has made a good turnaround in the recent past and most of the experts reckon it has happened because he has decided to start relying more on his original skill i.e. to bowl off spin.
After bursting onto the scene with wonderful performances, Ashwin had faded a little bit as he had tried to bring in more and more variations in his bowling, the carom ball and that delivery in which he used to pause a little bit in his bowling action and then, let the ball go.
It’s not that those variations were not that effective, but, he was overusing them and thus, making it easy for the batsmen to line him up. His off spin had sort of gone out of his repertoire.
But, last year, after being left out of the playing XI for the first test match against Australia which was played in Adelaide, he realized that he probably needed to return to his basics and keep it simple for himself.
And, as soon as he started doing that, it did wonders. He looked a completely changed bowler in the World Cup that followed just after that Australia test series.
He was putting flight on the ball, giving it a good tweak and was mainly trying to get the ball spinning in to the right handed batsmen and he reaped the rewards of it.
Even on the flat Australian pitches where it’s always difficult for the spinners to extract purchase, Ashwin was getting wickets and his performances were the key to India’s smooth run to the semi final round of the competition.
And, the 28-year old has continued the good work after the World Cup too. In every test match that India has played this year, Ashwin has been the pick of the bowlers.
Now, with a tough home assignment coming up for India against South Africa, Virat Kohli and the Indian team management would want their premier off spinner to remain in the same sort of shape.