Ravichandran Ashwin is one of the nicest guys you can come across – erudite, down to earth, and a gentleman to the core.
If there’s one member of this feisty Indian team you don’t expect to go looking for trouble, it’s him. And yet, Monday at the Wankhede Stadium, with the match all but wrapped up nicely for the hosts, Ashwin waged a war of words with England’s James Anderson.
Ashwin was irked by the England fast bowler’s comments the day before about Indian captain Virat Kohli. But therein lies one of the biggest reasons why this Indian team is turning out to be such world-beaters.
In Kohli, they now have a leader who commands so much respect that his troop can march into the Valley of Death with unflinching faith in him. He is well known for his aggression and never-say-die spirit, and his team-mates are slowly imbibing it.
As India took an unassailable 3-0 lead in the five-match series with one Test remaining, Kohli’s contribution – both as a leader and leading batsman – has been key in getting the better of a team that has historically proven to be tough nuts for the Indians to crack.
Even though the margin of wins would suggest otherwise, this really has been a good contest. The biggest difference has been that whereas India have seized the key moments, captain Alastair Cook and his men could not.
England should have won the opening Test in Rajkot, and they enjoyed the upper hand at various moments in the three matches they have lost. Mumbai was the worst for them – having won a crucial toss and scoring 400 runs batting first, they really had no business losing from there.
But like they have done throughout the series, they could not give that one final twist of the knife when India were 307-6 in the first innings.
In hindsight, you can find several faults with England. The decision to play two spinners and four seamers has been criticised, but Cook just tried to play to his team’s strength.
And I am not sure how much one extra spinner, or one extra batsman, would have helped.
The biggest thorn in England’s side is the Kohli-Ashwin combination. Kohli has scored 640 runs in the four Tests at an average of 128, while Ashwin has taken 27 wickets at an average of 23.7. These are just exceptional performances that the tourists are still struggling to find answers for, and we’re almost at the end of the series.
Another aspect of the game that has worked out for the hosts is how well the lower order has batted. Every time India have been in trouble, someone from Ashwin down has responded. It was Jayant Yadav in Mumbai, Ravindra Jadeja in Mohali and Ashwin in Vizag.
England have contributed to all this by showing a false sense of bravado while batting, and by not having world-class spinners.
The batsmen have tried to be overly aggressive in trying to dominate the Indian bowling. There was a spell of 29 overs during Kohli’s masterful knock of 235 when he did not hit a single boundary. That is the way to bat in the Sub-continent – the knowledge of how to go with the ebb and flow of the match is crucial.
And like Cook himself admitted, Moeen Ali and Adil Rashid still have a long way to go before they can be as effective as Graeme Swann and Monty Panesar.
England have done well to battle hard, but India clearly have been a class apart in this series.
