Ravichandran Ashwin, Senior India off-spinner and the new Test series’s edge in their decade-plus tussle underlines the respect the two players have for one another, and it is how he has figured out how to tackle Steve Smith ahead of the next five-match Test series. The Border-Gavaskar Trophy is set to begin in Perth on November 22, and the two veterans will come face to face as they have not done so in a long time. They have also shared the same team at the Rising Pune Supergiant and even the Delhi Capitals in the past helping Ashwin to ‘break it down’ with Smith’s game plans.
“Steve Smith is especially fascinating as a player against spin. He has a peculiar technique while even facing fast bowling,” Ashwin said in an interview with ‘7Cricket’.
“But within the game of spin, I think he came in due to an artificial game plan and an artificial execution and all which is not used to be the case. So indeed with the passage of time, I have found ways and means to take it down.
This is all net practices that I have watched him perform, his tenure at the Delhi Capitals, his tenure at RPSG gave me a glimpse of how he trains, how he prepares and what appeals or repulses him.’ Following the indomitable Smith while playing cameo roles for various franchisees, the competitive Ashwin rated Smith highly as a thinker of the game even when he had faced shoulder to shoulder with the premier spinner and scored 348 runs from 570 balls. He has been dismissed by Ashwin three times.
‘He is indeed,’ as well as being very much a cricketing head,’ more strategic than it seems to look as well. ‘He all the time wants to be up on you one way or the other. But then, he has very imaginative and very constructive methods of training and engaging you.’
“And at times during the process of bowling, as a bowler you can proffering or offering your skill unto the batter and know if you have him or not. This I experienced many times in the years I have played with Steve Smith, there were times I imagined he has me.’
“However many times, and much later, when I consider that I will have worked out what he does or how he operates with the bat, there has been a time when I have gotten the better of him. I’ve had the measure of him.” A batting prodigy of this generation, there is no doubt Smith would be looking forward to playing some big scores, considering his ineffective run as an opener post the retirement of David Warner, with only 171 runs in four Tests at a paltry average of 28.50.
Ashwin finds himself in the list of Indian bowlers to have taken the most wickets on Australian soil in Test matches with 38, only behind Anil Kumble who had 49 and Kapil Dev who had 51.
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