Ravichandran Ashwin once again came to the fore and rescued India from a sticky situation on the first day of the first Test match at Chennai against Bangladesh.
Ashwin walked onto the MA Chidambaram Stadium field when India were in a terrible rut having lost six wickets for as little as 144 runs on the score board. A loud cheer went up for the local boy as he reached the crease.
In what can be termed as his finer workings, Ravichandran Ashwin executed numerous blistering shots that had the head coach Gautam Gambhir caught up in the splendor of the ground shots.
Of the many great shots that Ashwin made, particularly, Gambhir noticed the cut shot that he blocked Nahid Rana with. Around the 44th over’s final delivery, the tall fast bowler offered a short ball wide of the batsman at 144.2kph.
Taking his chances, the Indian batsman played a very exquisite cut to the supper cover region that had the ball sped past all boundary fielders. The commentators were quick to classify it the ‘shot of the day’.
Despite everything else, it was the comment made by Gambhir in response to all this that attracted the maximum interest – at that time he seemed absolutely euphoric with Ashwin’s shot making.
The recent series victory of Bangladesh against Pakistan has stirred the cricketing world and attracted attention. Ravichandran Ashwin admitted their triumph and said, “This is one series that has jolted the cricketing community.”
Bedi’s openness to see who performs best in the given situation partly explains why Soumya Sarkar began warming up American style even as the match had only three overs left. There is no way you can classify it as an underdog anymore, they have played really good cricket,” he said, stressing on the advancement of Bangladesh.
“They have raised their hands and announced, ’Look, we are an improving team and we are playing great cricket,’” Ashwin said acknowledging the growth of Bangladesh cricket.
