India Was One Wicket Short Today: R Ashwin
Jan 9, 2019 at 4:12 PM
The Indian spin bowling spearhead, R Ashwin, who made strong inroads for Indian team with a four-fer, surprisingly, felt not difference between the pitch on which Indian team was bowling today and the one which was led down four years back, when India lost a Test match to England here, “When we played (against) England last here, the morning of the first day wicket was a bit damp, it spun a little and it was absolutely flat on day 2 and 3. I see very similar traits here. We got out of jail and got to 330-340 the last time we played them here,” said R Ashwin in the post-match presser.
Ashwin felt that Indian team was one wicket short in the day and one wicket could have made the difference as he said, “If we could have got one more wicket, we were on the course to do that (it would have been better), but probably we will come out tomorrow morning and try and snap couple of wickets and see how quickly we can stall their innings.”
“Generally, Wankhede has been a big bat first and score big kind of a Test match always, so we knew that it will be up against the odds, generally there is some moisture in the morning and we wanted to capitalise on it and we couldn’t unfortunately.
“But the afternoon session wasn’t all that bad because we actually gave 90 odd (79) runs and took only one wicket obviously, but that was a big wicket, we got Root. We thought a couple of wickets together (in the last session) if we could patch it up and try and finish the day with four or five down, be nice, it would be nice to finish on six down actually,” he added.
The dismissal of Joe Root was something that grabbed the eyes today as Ashwin, earlier, bowled Joe Root a bit on off stump line before making a little bit of change in his technique to rub an edge of his bat and getting the first wicket of the day for himself. Revealing whether it was a plot to dismiss Root, he said, “I must say, I reworked that dismissal in my head because he has got out a lot of times in the slips. In the last three Test matches, we have played, he nicked one in Vizag, I thought he nicked one and it was reviewed over and turned over. But he has got a tendency to nick spinners to the slip cordon. I saw him nick Dane Peidt in South Africa. He has done it quite a few times to Nathon Lyon (Australia) as well.”
“So I was just imagining. On the first day the first day, this is one of the wickets out of the 4 Tests matches, where actually edges do carry to slips, so I was just mentally working it over and it happened.”
Ashwin defended Karun Nair for the tough dropped catch as he said that there was a little chance in that type of catches and said, “We can’t be hard on those catches. I though those was less than 50-50. We will have to give it to them. Yes, we have put down a few catches including me during the series, but I think those cannot really count on (our) chances.”
Concluding the presser by showering praises over Peter Jennings and praised his defence and tagged him as a good player, “Obviously, a debut century is special for him. I thought I had a weird feeling when that one at gully popped over Karun that he might have a good day because he had a great season for Durham. He just continued from where he left off, I guess, He has got a good tight defence, looks a very good player.”
The Indian team, after failing to get an early advantage right at the start of the day made a comeback taking four wickets in last two sessions of the day. The game is still in the balance and can move in any direction, depending upon the team performance.