Ashwin and Jadeja: the multidimensional cheat code for India’s dominance

Cricket’s primordial roots are often linked to that massive hoick into a neighbour’s window or that lightning-quick delivery that sends the stumps cartwheeling. Yes, there will be that shadow-playing of a forward defensive block or the fine-tuning of the final delivery flexion on dreary summer days within office corridors. But this is the adult reflex weighed down by home loans and existential angst.

But cast your eyes back to childhood and most sporting memories would be associated with an aggressive stroke or a sliver of speed dismantling the timber. Back then scaling a wall to steal a mango or pedalling downhill on a cycle and screaming your lungs out were all part of the business of being alive. Some ground beneath the feet, the skies above, air to breathe and friends to laugh with, were more than enough.

An exotic species

However in all this, both childhood’s joy and adulthood’s cynicism, there still exists a dichotomy. Either you batted or bowled, even if the underlying attributes varied from patience to combustion. Now imagine a player who can do both with felicity, and there you land up with that exotic species called the all-rounder.

This is like stepping into a basement sale and buying two and getting two more. Four for the price of two and when we dwell upon this mathematical and commercial blessing, perhaps we may be talking about R. Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja, fresh as we are from India’s latest 2-0 Test series triumph over Bangladesh. If their core skills are linked to inflicting death by spin, the two can bat too.

It is two personnel with four attributes, and any opposition running into them in Indian conditions is asking for trouble. Be it under the Chennai sun or Kanpur’s dark clouds, India’s luminescence was beamed high by the duo. Ashwin scored 114 runs averaging 57 while Jadeja yielded 94 at 47. Importantly, their 199-run seventh-wicket alliance during the first innings at Chepauk shut Bangladesh out of the contest.

Now add their key resource area, just to throw in some corporate jargon, and you have Ashwin with 11 wickets and Jadeja scalping nine. This double whammy, with spearhead Jasprit Bumrah also grabbing 11, meant that Bangladesh was always down for the count even if the men from Dhaka flew in after registering a 2-0 Test series victory over Pakistan at Rawalpindi.

Dealing with a top-notch all-rounder is like driving on a highway. You see this sleek sports vehicle bearing down and soon the vehicle zooms ahead. Just as you nod in admiration, the same vehicle pops in the rear, overtakes, and at that precise moment the driver winks and blows a kiss. If you are into superstitions, you think about nightmares, and if you dig Sigmund Freud, then welcome to the zone of hallucinations. Either way, shock and awe linger.

Multiple insurance policies

The all-rounder description is now broad-based to include the ‘wicketkeeper and batter’ combine too. Think Adam Gilchrist, M.S. Dhoni and the latest, Rishabh Pant. But the more classical understanding is linked to someone who can both bat and bowl. While turning out at home, India has Ashwin, Jadeja and Pant to fall back upon, these multiple insurance policies quell risk. But when crossing the seas, this protection shrinks as a choice is made between Ashwin and Jadeja while the pacers get more play in the eleven.

And that’s when we stumble into Indian cricket’s unrequited love mesh, its eternal quest for the great fast-bowling all-rounder. It is a pursuit dating back to 1994 when the great Kapil Dev finally called it quits. To be fair, just as Kapil was fading, Manoj Prabhakar drew into sight as a dogged opener and an effective seamer, adept at reverse-swing too. But when Prabhakar, wilting under Sanath Jayasuriya’s assault, switched to spin in a 1996 World Cup ODI against Sri Lanka, his career ground to a halt.

In England, Australia and New Zealand, when the new ball does much more on surfaces organically leaning towards the faster men, batting collapses are imminent and it is there the all-rounder steps in and stems the rot. Then he wears his bowling shoes, steams in hard and inflicts bruises that never heal on the rivals. A seam-bowling all-rounder is a pressing need, and there is no denying that. Even when India won the 1983 World Cup in England, besides Kapil, it had Madan Lal and Roger Binny, who could bowl medium-pace and bat too. Add Mohinder Amarnath with his gentle seam-up, and it is no surprise that the squad prevailed.

Much later Ajit Agarkar and Irfan Pathan were seen as probable candidates and the two have a Test hundred each but primarily they were seamers. It also seemed inevitable that Binny’s progeny Stuart, with his seam and batting skills, would be tried at the highest level. When India toured England in 2014, Stuart was pencilled in as the essential all-rounder. Just that Stuart could not fill his father’s boots, though the youngster tried hard.

Years later, Hardik Pandya was seen as the answer to India’s woes. Even if he didn’t go the way of a Laxmi Ratan Shukla, one of those early ‘next Kapil’ candidates, Hardik is now seen as essential to limited-overs cricket. In Tests, there is a query over him lasting five days of rigour, this despite him being a fine athlete on his good days. He last appeared in Test whites in 2018 and India doesn’t have the varied riches it owned when Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Virender Sehwag and Yuvraj Singh turned out.

This quartet batted and could bowl too. Tendulkar would spin and swing; Ganguly, never express, still probed with his gentle speed; and Sehwag and Yuvraj, frenetic with the bat, preferred the opposite trait with the ball, being slow peddlers of turn. India doesn’t have such options now even if Rahul Dravid called Virat Kohli a ‘wrong-footed in-swinging menace’. Rohit Sharma does fancy some spin, still the assurance that Tendulkar and company gave as bowlers, doesn’t exist. This adds more pressure on the search for the genuine all-rounder.

The blue-chip era

In India, Ashwin and Jadeja excel, but they are ageing too. And abroad, there is an issue as a seam-bowling all-rounder is yet to surface. You won’t be blamed if thoughts veer towards the 1980s when Kapil, Imran Khan, Ian Botham and Richard Hadlee reigned as blue-chip all-rounders. The first three could walk into any eleven either as a pure batter or pure bowler. Hadlee could bat too. These were proud men, convinced that they could walk on water.

Even as veterans in the early 1990s, some of them excelled. There is a spell that Botham bowled to a young Tendulkar in the 1992 World Cup game at Perth. The pace was gone but the wily craftsman had the Mumbaikar in all kinds of trouble before luring the edge. Or who can forget Kapil’s four consecutive sixes off Eddie Hemmings to avoid the follow-on at Lord’s in 1990?

Trade-off: Hardik Pandya is key to India’s white-ball plans, but there are doubts about whether his body can handle Test cricket’s rigours. | Photo credit: Getty Images

For now India has Ashwin (3,423 runs and 527 wickets in Tests) and Jadeja (3,130 and 303), and as coach Gautam Gambhir said, maybe it is time to celebrate our spinners who can bat, instead of worrying about the next Kapil.