Perhaps, the most striking thing about Ravichandran Ashwin standing aloft with the match ball—for the 37th time if you’d lost count—was how inevitable it felt at 10:00 AM. Ashwin began bowling a little after 10:30 AM.

A lot of great cricketers exude a sense that a century or a five-fer is inevitable when they are playing. Batters have confidence shots, which, when they play early, is a coded message of impending dominance. Bowlers may convey that with their first couple of overs.

Ashwin sometimes permeates this feeling even before he has gotten into a spell. Many a travel itinerary has been advanced over the last 13 years in the knowledge that he was to bowl in the fourth innings. Like they were on the fourth morning of the Chennai Test when the pitch offered consistent and spitting turn off the footmarks.

Ashwin wasn’t called on to bowl until after the drinks break in the first session. But it was still hard to miss him on the field. As a dogged partnership between captain Najmul Hossain Shanto and veteran Shakib Al Hasan developed, there he was, mouthing suggestions to Rohit Sharma or walking across to Ravindra Jadeja and animatedly running through field settings in the middle of an over that neither of them was actually bowling.

The first hour had this effect of the play being but a tease before the Ashwin takeover. And when he did, it took him all of four balls and a smart placement of the short-leg fielder slightly behind the left-hander’s eyeline to begin tightening the noose around Bangladesh in the first Test. He did so in a manner that you’ve seen so many times that you can play the dismissal in your head with this description to follow.

Shakib Al Hasan pushed forward to defend, but the drop on the ball meant he didn’t actually get forward enough to smother the bounce. The ball hit the inside half of Shakib’s bat, onto his pad before lobbing towards that fielder. Yesterday afternoon, another left-hander, Mominul Haque, also failed in his attempts to defend Ashwin on the front foot. On that occasion, a similarly slowed-up delivery was angled into the left-hander, who, deceived by the drift, played inside the line of the ball only to see it drop and spin ever so slightly past his defense to hit the stumps.

All of this is a roundabout way of suggesting that even in a sport where every data point is logged, every movement is registered, and every action is infinitely debated, some things remain largely inscrutable. Everyone has seen what Ashwin does for a good part of 13 years. Virtually nobody seems to know how to deal with it.

Join Get ₹99!

.

For India, there is, of course, a glorious familiarity to these rituals now, a muscle memory in those high-fiving arms. At the start of a 10-Test season, a time when they are chasing another World Test Championship final, and when different parts of their Test structure are in a steady state of transition, that they can still bask in such happy old habits like Ashwin is a priceless luxury to possess.

Which doesn’t mean it is easy on Ashwin. The grind of a Test match takes a lot out of a cricketer, and Ashwin, 38 now and taking questions about a swansong, cannot simply hope to hop from Chennai to Kanpur and back to Bengaluru, hoping to always be awesome.

“It is a long season. But sometimes when you look so far ahead, it can be quite deflating. You are playing like 3-4 months of cricket and you are playing 10 Test matches. A lot of Test matches,” he said in Chennai.

“So, sometimes you can’t think like that. You have to stack it up. I did put in a bit of work getting into it. I know I need to have some reserves in the tank. So, I have tried to build it up. We will have to see. There are good breaks between games. Hopefully, we will get small windows for me to keep ironing it out. More than skill, I think it is about physically being able and pliable to be able to go through the season which is of utmost importance for me right now.”

Ultimately, cricket, like the world outside, will always be in a state of chaotic and unprecedented flux. Every passing week will bring new ruptures, new shocks, and new excitements. Things will change, and teams will need new vision and personnel. But on days like this, you realize why certain old habits retain a seductive fantasy.

By IPL Agent

💲Daily Check-In Free Bonus💲 💵 Sign Up & Login everyday to get free cash!💵 👉 cricket1.in