Ashwin, master of spin and Renaissance man

Can there ever have been a cricketer more driven, more demanding of himself and yet more giving than Ravichandran Ashwin? 

There are many who have been as single-minded and dedicated to the game but they tend to be overtaken by either a Boycottian/Pietersenesque sense of self-importance or become introspective 'Mr Crickets'. They take from the game much more than they ever give back. They may inspire devotion, loyalty and respect but never genuine love. How could they when there seems none in their cricketing hearts? Ashwin asks of himself and gives to us all.

He is a technician, an analyst, a psychologist, a conjurer,  a philosopher, a sage and a prophet. He is a soothsayer, a cricketing haruspex scouring the entrails of past victims for patterns and clues. It is not luck or coincidence that has brought 29 five-wicket hauls but destiny.

He sees spin bowling not as art or science but an expression of both. A Renaissance man.

He is a geometrist, a geometrophile if you will - a lover of angles. Crease position, arm height, cant of the wrist and seam, and all variations thereof. And what of the permitted 15 degrees of elbow straightening? Don't think he hasn't looked into that!

He is a physicist. A devotee of the laws of motion and mechanics. Run-up, arm speed, rotation, grip and flick. Faster, slower, higher, lower. Undetectable at release, unplayable at the crease. 'Natural variation' you say? Don't be so sure. 

He is a chemist. There is nothing random in the compounds he creates from these myriad elements. Nets are his laboratories with Bunsen burners as standard issue. 

And he is a prospector too, always on the lookout for a new element to add to the mix.

But most of all he is an artist, a craftsman. He may possess a box of tricks like no other but he employs them subtly with guile, finesse and reserve.  Like Shane Warne and other Masters of Spin before him, he probes and thinks his way through an over - six bullets primed to fire, or not. Sometimes holding back your best shot is the right strategy too, in Test cricket at least. But he can play the short game equally as well as the long one. Adaptability, another Ashwin trait.

The joy and fulfilment that Ashwin finds in the science and art of spin bowling should be spread throughout the world, it belongs to all of us. But countries outside the subcontinent (where the majority of criticism of the Chennai pitch has come from) have to be open enough to see it. The England camp has wisely refrained from even implying anything negative - 'challenging' was Joe Root's euphemistic description -  but they didn't actively endorsed it. How could they? Such a surface is anathema to them and deemed 'below average' rating under ECB pitch regulations which state that:

"Pitches should be prepared to provide an even contest between bat and ball and should allow all disciplines in the game to flourish."

Generously, those regulations do concede that:

" There is nothing wrong with a pitch that affords some degree of turn on the first day of a match though anything more than occasional unevenness of bounce at this stage of the match is not expected. It is to be expected that a pitch will turn steadily more as a match progresses, and it is recognised that a greater degree of unevenness of bounce may develop." 

However:

"In no circumstances should the pitch ‘explode’ / ‘go through the top’ though again, “how often” must be considered."

Yet these are the fields of dreams of future Ashwins and what feeds them nourishes us all. 

In the meantime England have a week to find some new answers to Ashwin's riddles. A good spin bowler is like a fine winemaker, a masterful one like a great Bordeaux vigneron. Ashwin has produced many great vintages of which Chateau Chennai '21 is just the latest. It will not be the last. Cheers!