Ravichandran Ashwin credited his successful adjustments to the conditions in the West Indies for his ‘five-star’ show on Day 1 of the Dominica Test. The off-spinner took five wickets for 60 as India bowled out West Indies on 150.
India were 80/0 and trailed by 70 runs at the end of Day 1.
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It was a successful return to the playing XI for Ashwin who was ignored for the World Test Championship (WTC) final against Australia the last month. The match that India lost by 209 runs.
“Thought it was a pretty good performance. There was a bit of moisture on the pitch earlier but it started to spin later. Saw on the TV as well that it turned more later. Had to adapt early. It was a bit dry, have to get the pace right to trouble the batsmen,” Ashwin said while speaking to the broadcaster at the end of the day’s play.
“International cricket is all about adapting to different conditions. With so many leagues around, we can get carried away with a few performances in these leagues but international cricket is different.”
Apart from five wickets, Ashwin became the third Indian to cross 700 international wickets on Wednesday. With the dismissal of Tagenarine Chanderpaul, he also became the first Indian to dismiss a father-son pair in Test cricket.
In a chat with BCCI, Ashwin revealed what it took for him to adjust to Test cricket and conditions in the Caribbean islands. The off-spinner was recently playing in the T20 league TNPL.
I landed in Barbados. I felt a bit jetlagged. I came from TNPL. I felt my shoulder, the arm speed, the body position at the crease weren’t ideal. On the first day at Barbados when we played on the practice surface. The nets was okay, the practice game, I didn’t feel okay at all. The second day I did another 8-10 overs, that was slightly better, so I just felt like that with the jetlag and the amount of workload, my shoulder rotational speed, my body going through into the ball, all these things take a certain amount of time and what happens is that sometimes when you are playing on slow and turning surfaces, you don’t know how much you should really impart on the ball. What sort of force you must put from your shoulder? So I always go and practice on a cement surface where I don’t have to muscle the ball, I just have to release it nicely and I know that’s my sweet spot,” he said.
Apart from Ashwin, debutant Yashasvi Jaiswal also had a good outing as he scored 40 not out. Jaiwal’s entry into Team India has come on the back of a successful domestic season and IPL 2023.
Ashwin praised the debutant and added that we would be getting to see “some special” performances from the opener in the future.
“Jaiswal is a vibrant cricketer, extremely talented. I hope he goes on to do great things in his career. I think we’re going to see some special performances from him,” he added.
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