Former Indian spinner Maninder Singh thinks R. Ashwin has started experimenting too much with his bowling while he thinks Ashwin is not being guided properly. BCCI must be concerned right now about his performance as Ashwin has the ‘match winning’ potential and to recapture his best form he should be provided the right bowling coach at this stage.
On Wednesday, while India was playing against Bangladesh Ashwin showed off a new bowling action which made Maninder anxious about Ashwin’s bowling future. “He has been trying so many variations. It generally happens that when you are trying too many things then you lose your originality and that is what is happening, and that is the worry for me” he said. Ashwin is a match winner in his eyes; he thinks that he has the potential to win matches in all the three forms.
“But everything has gone haywire with him. I don’t know what the bowling coach have been doing with him, and what the main coach and captain have been doing. If I was around, I would not have allowed [his bowling to slip] that so far that he had to change his action.” Maninder said in an interview to ESPNcricinfo.
What Maninder thinks wrong with Ashwin is that he has transformed himself from an attacking bowler to a defensive one. “Someone has got to tell him that you were picked in the Indian side because you showed that intent that you wanted to get wickets in the Indian Premier League, in 20-overs games,” he said. “Then you come into a Test match and after the Australia series [last year], I read somewhere, he said ‘my role was to restrict’. Now who has given him that idea? It’s the captain.” This is what makes Ashwin to collapse on India’s overseas matches and he is going through wicket less in the last few matches.
“So I think he is not being handled properly. Somebody who came into the Indian side because he had the capability and the urge to take wickets, he was eager to take wickets in 20-overs cricket, becomes defensive in Test cricket where you are supposed to take wickets … Something is going wrong somewhere, someone is giving him the wrong advice” he said in the interview.
Mahinder thinks that the time has come for BCCI to wake up and arrange proper bowling coaches for Ashwin and other Indian bowlers so that they can be guided what is right and what is not. “Someone has got to keep talking to these kids and stop them from thinking negatively. What needs to be urgently addressed is what is happening with the bowling coach. We had Bhuvneshwar Kumar bowling an Australian length; he’s someone who pitches the ball up and takes wickets, but he has stopped swinging the ball. The urgent requirement is to look for somebody, a bowling coach who can guide our bowlers properly. And get a proper spinner guide for the spinners; we don’t want to lose them quickly.” He insisted.
