India’s seasoned spinner Ravichandran Ashwin revealed his thought process while attempting to take a stunning catch during the second day of the third Test against New Zealand to dismiss Daryl Mitchell. Just like the first two Tests, India looked slowly falling out of the race to victory when Daryl Mitchell and Will Young took the brunt of scoring runs and forged a 50-run partnership.
India knew a moment of magic was the demand of the hour to end the dangerous-looking partnership. The moment came, and it was from Ashwin, not with the ball but with his ‘trusted hands’ on the field.
Mitchell opened his arms and tried to clear the rope but only bottomed his shot. Ashwin went running backwards and stretched both his arms to take a stunner, forcing Wankhede to erupt with ecstacy and applaud his moment of brilliance.
What a catch by Ashwin #INDvsNZ NorthStandGang pic.twitter.com/clE151nCEo
— Nishant Jhangiani (NishantJhangian) November 2, 2024
“I wanted to get as close to the ball as possible. I have got great hands and I trusted my hands to go through with it [on the Mitchell catch],” Ashwin said at the end of the day’s play.
This wasn’t the only piece of magic that the fans saw from Ashwin. The seasoned spinner, who is well versed in the different variations of spin, brought out his ace in the hole, the carrom ball, turning the tides in India’s favour.
Glenn Phillips tonked the ball into the stands for two towering successive sixes in Ashwin’s over, which once again brought out a state of worry in the Indian camp. But Ashwin made Phillips bite the dust by outwitting him with a carrom ball. The 38-year-old beat Phillips’s defence on the spin to allow the ball to clip the off-stump. The flow of runs ended along with Phillips’s quick-fire 26-run knock of 14 deliveries.
Ashwin shed light on the reasoning behind deploying the carrom ball effectively to draw out its maximum effect, which allowed him to flourish throughout the day. “The game itself is divided into two halves. The one from the pavilion end and the other side, the wicket is responding very differently. It’s slightly flatter from the one where we are bowling from the dressing room side, the bounce is much lesser, so I thought I would try and use it the other way. The batters are also knowing that it’s easier to take me on from this side. So I wanted to give something different,” Ashwin remarked.
India’s hopes of bowling out New Zealand on Day 2 eventually crashed out after umpires decided to call stumps when Ravindra Jadeja cleaned up Matt Henry. Ajaz Patel walked back unbeaten with New Zealand’s score reading 171/9, leading by 143 runs. Ashwin is hopeful that India should be able to wrap up New Zealand’s dwindling innings quickly without giving too many runs away. “Hopefully, not many. We should wrap it up with one or two runs here and there. Any runs saved in this innings are going to be much more critical for us when we chase it down,” Ashwin said.
With the way the India spinners have been able to extract, a target around 150 or 160 could turn out to be a tricky affair for the hosts. Ashwin acknowledged India batters would need to step up in order to avoid a whitewash. “It’s not going to be easy, we’ll have to bat really well. I expected a lot more bounce and speed from this Mumbai pitch, it has been quite slow, which is a surprise for me. It’s not a typical Bombay pitch, but much slower than usual,” Ashwin noted.
