‘I made him my obsession for about six months’ – R Ashwin on how he prepared for Steve Smith

When R Ashwin returned to Australia last winter for another challenging Test series for the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, he knew will come up against Steve Smith in the most anti-fingerspin country in the world. With no turn on offer from the deck, Ashwin knew he’ll have to beat Australian batters, including Smith, in the air and make do with the bounce that those surfaces offer.

As it turned out, it was his most fruitful tour of Australia in terms of wickets and sheer impact on the games. He bowled terrifically to end with 4/55 in the first innings of the D/N Test in Adelaide – helping India become the only visiting team to take a first-innings lead in a pink-ball Test in Australia despite only 244 on the board – before 36 all-out threw all his good work in jeopardy. But in the next Test at MCG, Ashwin’s 3/35 and 2/71 were instrumental to India’s come-from-behind inspirational victory.

R Ashwin got Smith out thrice in three Tests on his way to finishing a Test series in Australia with 12 scalps at just 28.83 in a country where touring fingerspinners going above 40 for their wickets is the norm. Ashwin got Smith out caught – once on the outside edge, once off the inside edge and also LBW.

It was a battle he had planned and prepared for the best part of six months, the off-spin maestro has revealed, as he made it a goal to keep Smith down for as long as he could, which allowed the other Indian bowlers – in an attack missing Ishant Sharma and Mohammad Shami – to get into games a lot more smoothly.

R Ashwin had his best series in Australia in 2020-21 winter.

R Ashwin explains how he planned to do well in Australia

In an interview with ESPNcricinfo’s ‘Cricket Monthly’, R Ashwin revealed that he nearly made Smith his “obsession” for best part of six months leading into the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. With the pandemic inadvertently giving Indian players a break for eight months, Ashwin spent a lot of his time at home studying the Australian batters, including the rising star Marnus Labuschagne.

“I made him my obsession for about six months, not just two weeks or three weeks,” he said. “Just footage, just watching different matches. The most recent series they played [before India toured Australia in 2020-21] was New Zealand. I went through every single day’s play. I would go on to my app and check – how many runs was [Marnus] Labuschagne batting on when Will Somerville came on to bowl? Which ball did he hit over cow corner?”

“I think there is a bit of premeditation when it comes to Aussie batsmen. I think in this whole “playing the Aussie way”, they are looking for aggressive options. Obviously, Aussie pitches are very true. So you can get away without getting to the pitch of the ball sometimes, which can be very disconcerting [for the bowler]. As a spinner, you need to be very precise in Australia. Every run you give must be on your own terms.”

Keeping Labuschagne quiet was also pertinent to India’s cause and this is where, again, it was Ashwin who played the saviour for his team. Ashwin got the right-hander out twice in the series, both in the first two Tests where he could collect only 129 runs off his 4 innings. Labuschagne averages 73 in Australia with 6 hundreds and 8 fifties.

“So whenever Marnus Labuschagne steps out, he hits the ball over cow corner for an offspinner, or he hits it over mid-off,” Ashwin said. “It’s very rarely through long-on. And he doesn’t have a flat sweep, he has a lap sweep, like a paddle. All these shots have a trigger. And it’s very fine. If you don’t know or if you’ve not seen enough footage, you cannot pick these things up.”

It is only when a back niggle started to aggravate in the third Test for Ashwin that the two Aussie batters got away from him and started scoring big. But the first two Tests, where India came one decent innings with the bat short in Adelaide and won in Melbourne, they were troubled by Ashwin a lot. Against Smith, specifically, Ashwin said the idea was to disturb his hands and curb his freedom through the series.

“And with Steve Smith, his batting is very momentum-driven. Most of his batting comes from his hands, so my whole idea was to disturb his hands through the series. He’s got certain hand-movement patterns. You have to pick them and be able to bowl in a way that disturbs his hand pattern. So I bowled with different load-ups, different speeds, different run-ups and all that. I realised I kind of got to him,” he said.

At the SCG, Ashwin found it hard to tackle a slow low surface with his back also holding him back. But despite the injury, he made an impact and this time it was with the bat. He played arguably his finest Test innings for India, batting out 128 deliveries for his 39 not out on the final day to help his team salvage an epic draw along with Hanuma Vihari, who battled for 161 balls for his 23* with an injured hamstring.