I was extremely happy to see him do well as I knew the kind of hunger he had when playing for Hyderabad. It’s purely about his fitness and stamina. When the speeds have dropped, he hasn’t been as effective. The secret to him doing well is the kind of fitness he has. He could have used far more of his talent and got far more Test wickets.
He is outstandingly talented how many bowlers can move the ball both ways as naturally as him? Every time he was bowling 135+, he looked very potent. ‘When speed dropped, he hasn’t been effective’ And we all know what energy he brings on to the field. His bowling has a lovely rhythm, a banker bowler now, and if there is a little help on the wicket, he is very dangerous. Since the 2018 tour of England, he has matured beautifully as a batsman. My job would be to observe these little things, see if something is going wrong, and point out if necessary. He would arch back after loading when he wanted more dip and turn. He would do little things: lean forward at release, weight in front, when he wants to bowl slower without making it obvious with his arm-speed. It helped him stay upright and generate more overspin. In Australia this time, he loaded up in front of the face, almost. The best thing about Ashwin is, he isn’t afraid to come out of his comfort zone at all. He would ask you lots of questions and to answer it convincingly, I had to dig deep into my knowledge. I thoroughly enjoyed my conversations with Ashwin.
A spinner really matures when he is 27-28 and if he maintains fitness after that, he has 10 years of a career. Remember the ball he bowled in the 2019 World Cup to dismiss Babar Azam? It had everything. Once you get that vigour through the crease, the body comes fully into the action, you get more fizz. Getting that vigour is a combination of working more on the bowling and getting fitter. All I want from him is to get more vigour through the crease. He is young (26), and the future is still out there. His peak hasn’t come in my tenure, yes, but the kind of work we have put and importantly he is putting, means he is on the right path. ‘He needs more vigour through the crease’ READ | ‘During Shastri’s tenure, there was no agenda, decisions came from purely thinking about team values’ He is someone who likes to have that knowledge. We would talk during sessions, breaks, and I knew with him that it wouldn’t be overburdening him at all.
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He learnt how to adjust to different lengths on different pitches. He naturally wanted to know why certain things are happening with the ball – my job was to empower that knowledge. He is extremely intelligent and a very quick learner. Boom was always willing to try out different things in nets. He wanted to excel in Test cricket: that was his dream. So, we made him deliver from the centre of the box which gave him a better angle for his in-dippers, which made the batsmen play him a lot more. He was releasing from close to the stumps. But he would end up pushing it a bit too outside off-stump. That would make him push the ball away (from the right- hander) before his natural in-dippers would get the ball in. He had it at an angle, slanted, dictated by his wrist position. If you see, the way his fingers sit on the ball is different from most seamers. It primarily came from the way he held the ball. It was just a small tweak – the angle at which he approached the stumps. He wasn’t making the batsmen play as much as possible. The batsmen have less time and they don’t know which way it’s going to move. With such a great natural release position where the seam is upright through the air, he gets more movement off the wicket than in the air which makes him dangerous. There were people who had told him – ‘don’t change anything, work with what got you here’ – which is sound advice, of course, but where is the growth unless you try? He has one of the best seam positions in the world. This can’t happen if he doesn’t trust and is willing to do the hard work. We explained the importance of this to Shami. It was finding what’s the optimal running speed. You run in fast enough so that you are absolutely balanced at the moment of delivery at the crease. He is a rhythm bowler and it was clear that his entire bowling depends on the kind of run-up he generates. From changing Shami’s run-up, giving feedback to Bumrah, listening to Ashwin Bharat Arun tells Sriram Veera about the one-on-one sessions that changed India’s bowling unit