JOIN US Ravichandran Ashwin (4/70) set the tone for India’s domination with a double-strike in the eighth, and his first, over of the day. With Ravindra Jadeja claiming 4/51, eight of South Africa’s batsmen fell to spin but the offie maintained it was well-planned bowling, rather than the pitch, that spelt doom for the visitors.
“I don’t think there was enough on offer for the spinners,” Ashwin pointed out. “We were not beating the bat as often as we were doing in Mohali, but Jadeja was very good in the session after lunch, he was bottling one end up, which was precisely our plan and from there on they played a few false shots and brought us back into the game. Even at the end we were very conscious of the fact that we might go for about 50-60 runs for the last 2-3 wickets but I think we were pretty aware of what was going to come and we bowled quite well to them,” he explained.
Ashwin felt that South African batsmen could be apprehensive about him as he has been amongst wickets. “I think it depends on the ball that’s coming out,” he said when asked if South Africa were playing the ball or Ashwin. “I’m very confident, yes, and there will be some kind of hesitancy in any batting order when a person is getting wickets and that’s pretty natural. But I think today was a case of good bowling and also a lot of pressure being built up from both sides of the pitch,” he reasoned.
Ashwin said the decision to bowl on this wicket was a ‘rational’ one. “Now it seems so, at least,” he said when asked if it was a brave decision to bowl first. “The wicket was a little damp, that’s the feeling we got initially, so we wanted to bowl first and see what we could extract and even the first-class games played here, generally the first day it does a little bit, so taking all that into consideration I think it was a very rational decision.”
AB de Villiers was the only batsman who batted with some assurance. Ashwin, however, felt he was not a big concern as they kept striking at the other end. “Of course AB played really well,” he began. “… But there were occasions where he looked really edgy, it was not like he was completely taking the game away from us. Of course he played some lovely shots, he knows this ground really well, he knows his angles well, so he was looking to target a few regions in the ground, which was very evident, and once AB is in, 40-50 runs batting, it’s always going to be a tough call, because he’s a world-class batsman. You know it’s going to take some good delivery to prise him out. But I think we constantly kept getting wickets so the thought never came across our mind that one man can take this away, so it was proper Test match cricket,” he elaborated.