Volume 7

The Engineered Assassin’s Quest
for Excellence!
No matter how good your batting or bowling
is, every team wants an individual who can
contribute in more than one facet of the game.
The balance that an all-rounder provides is
something that every team desires and needs
in all three forms of the game. In Tests, there
is no doubt that all-rounders have made teams
dominant. West Indies had the likes of Sir
Garfield Sober and Sir Vivian Richards to win
them Tests in the 60s and 80s. However, as useful
that they might be, the shorter the format, the
more useful an all-rounder becomes.
- Piyush Zaware
still about out to promote new entrant Hardik
Pandya as a genuine all-rounder in the team,
we seemingly end up ignoring another cricketer
who has just crossed an important milestone in
all-round performance – Ravichandran Ashwin.
The 34-year- old hit a century in the second test
against England with another five-wicket haul
putting him in the pantheon of greats! He also
holds the record of being the fastest cricketer
to reach the milestone of 2,000 test runs and
250 wickets. He has even gone past the fabled
quartet of the eighties comprising Kapil Dev,
Richard Hadlee, Imran Kha,n and Ian Botham
on this occasion.
You don’t need a legendary all-rounder to win
your Test matches over a while and Australia
was a testimony to this. Barring Australia
when one looks back at some of the iconic test
teams, we encounter all-rounders who provide
much-needed stability to an already enhanced
unit. England had Botham and then Flintoff
later, the Proteas had the might of Jacques
Kallis and Shaun Pollock, the Lankans had the
services of Sanath the Kiwis had Hadle,e and
later Vettori at their disposal and our beloved
neighbours had a gem of an allrounder in
Imran Khan. India’s tryst with allrounders
began right after Kapil Dev’s retirement. Till
the time we had Kapil Dev we were a class
outfit with one of the world’s greatest
allrounders at our service. Speaking
purely about allrounders in
the red-ball format our
search seemed neverending.
While
the current
dispensation in
Indian cricket is
Ashwin lives cricket, breathes cricket and sleeps
cricket. When he is not playing cricket, he is
watching other teams going about their business
on television. If there is no international cricket
to be had, he watches Twenty20 leagues around
the world. When the pandemic ensured there
was no cricket to be watched, Ashwin was
talking about cricket. On his hugely popular
YouTube channel and Instagram account,
Ashwin interviewed teammates, opponents,
former players and many cricket experts.
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