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Ravichandran Ashwin creates unique record with 32 wickets in England series
Ashwin, who picked up his 30th five wicket haul in England’s second innings to once again play a crucial role in India’s thumping win by innings and 25 runs in the fourth Test, finished the four-match series with 32 scalps to his name.
Records and Ravichandran Ashwin are best friends. After becoming the fastest Indian to 400 Test wickets in the previous Test, Ashwin on Saturday became the first Indian cricketer to pick 30 or more wickets in a Test series on two separate occasions.
Ashwin, who picked up his 30th five wicket haul in England’s second innings to once again play a crucial role in India’s thumping win by innings and 25 runs in the fourth Test, finished the four-match series with 32 scalps to his name.
This is also the most wickets Ashwin has taken in a series. He bettered his 31 wicket-tally against South Africa in 2015.
Bishan Singh Bedi, Harbhajan Singh, BS Chandrasekhar, Kapil Dev are some of the former India stars to have taken more than 30 wickets in a single Test series.
It was Ashwin who started things for India when he picked up two wickets – Zak Crawley and Jonny Bairstow in his first over of the second innings.
He then gave England a body blow by trapping their captain Joe Root in front.
It was only fitting when he experienced off-spinner finished off the game by keeping up the last two England wickets – Jack Leach and Dan Lawrence. He finished with figures of 5/47 in the second innings.
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Credit must be given to his spin-bowling partner Axar Patel, who too etched his name on the record books. The left-arm spinner ran through the England middle-order and ended up with figures of 5/48 – his fourth five-wicket haul in only his third Test.
England were bowled out for 135 in the final session of Day 3 as India went on to win the series 3-1 coming back from 1-0 down. The win also sealed India’s spot in the World Test Championship final with New Zealand.
“The fact that we qualified for the WTC final is very important. The intensity was low after Chennai, despite the high in Australia. Every time there was a challenging time in the series, someone put their hand up, so this series win was right up there,” said Ashwin reacting on India’s win.
