Editorial: A centurion, by all means

The number 99 on R Ashwin’s Test jersey is misleading, particularly when he steps out to bat in much the same way as how he expertly takes the batters for a ride with the ball in hand. For someone who has made it a habit of scoring hundreds, especially at his beloved home ground at Chepauk, positioning himself joyously as Test cricket's premier spin-bowling all-rounder in the autumn years of a long and distinguished career, he should seriously reconsider changing it to 100 or any other fancy figure of his choice in three digits. After all, that's a privilege he has earned for himself on the strength of sustained hard work ably backed by grit for good measure.

In the recently concluded first Test against Bangladesh in Chennai, Ashwin upstaged all his team-mates, not for the first time reducing a team sport to an individual one, in firmly seizing the spotlight as he played a stellar role in India’s mammoth 280-run win. After heroically salvaging his team’s dire position in the first innings with a resilient century that raised hopes of a victory from a near hopeless situation, the 38-year-old elder statesman then went on to do what he has come to be more renowned for: take six wickets in the second innings to walk away with yet another man of the match award.

Over the years, we have gotten accustomed to seeing Ashwin raising his wrist all too often, in acknowledgement of the crowd's cheers, after completing a five-wicket haul for the umpteenth time, and lately he is making us get used to seeing him raise his bat too after reaching the coveted three-figure mark, something that has eluded even the more accomplished batters on either side on surfaces like the one at Chepauk, where he put more frontline batters of his side in the shade.

What else would you expect from someone who monomaniacally keeps raising the bar of excellence to heights that lesser athletes would abort their attempts at setting their foot there, easily discouraged and daunted by the steep climb.

On the eve of the Chennai Test, India head coach, Gautam Gambhir, made a prescient observation at a press meet when he was asked how worried he was about the team’s lack of a seam-bowling all-rounder. Gambhir laconically pointed out how not too many teams can boast having spin-bowling all-rounders in their ranks and that the presence of Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja is a godsend. Astonishingly, the match's narrative in the subsequent days reinforced Gambhir's prediction with both Ashwin and Jadeja forging a lethal combination to bamboozle Bangladesh with both bat and ball.

Just to delve deeper into cricketing folklore when a befuddled Graham Gooch asked Ian Botham, “Who writes your scripts?”, someone from the present Indian team should take a cue from those immortal words and ask Ashwin something along those lines. After seeing England’s James Anderson soldier on into his early 40s with unflagging enthusiasm, who is to say that it’s beyond Ashwin to tread on a similar path, considering that he now represents India in only one format. Although 38, Ashwin still retains the same commitment, desire and the fire in the belly that he had when the cricketing world knew nothing of him. If anything, that fire has become so intense that even time, considered an athlete’s greatest adversary, might find it hard to put out.