A month and half into tour,Ashwin finally arrives

Lasith Malinga positioned himself perfectly under the ball dropping from the heavens,until Lahiru Thirimanne charged into his peripheral vision

Lasith Malinga positioned himself perfectly under the ball dropping from the heavens,until Lahiru Thirimanne charged into his peripheral vision. So,with the leather somewhere within screeching distance,Malinga stepped back and watched it thud near his feet. And with that dropped catch if the funniest non-attempt in recent times could be called that Malinga allowed a giggling Ravichandran Ashwin to wrap up the winning runs on a day that he enjoyed his most sparkling performance with the ball in Australia.

It hasn’t been easy filling Harbhajan Singh’s boots on this tour. Many called for his return after Ashwin’s performances went from bad to worse during the Sydney and Adelaide Tests. Ashwin did himself no favours either by going at 9.60 runs per over during the Melbourne ODI. But soon after umpire Paul Reiffel revolved his arms from the Lillee-Marsh end in Perth to commence the first bowling powerplay,Ashwin found his calling in Australia by leaving his large imprints on three of the four field-restricted segments in the match.

With the field up and bowling to a rampaging Tillakaratne Dilshan in the 15th over,Ashwin came around the wicket and bowled a nagging leg-stump line for six consecutive balls,and was rewarded with a maiden. Dilshan finally learned to flick that length down to fine-leg,and earned his first run off Ashwin off the 10th ball he faced. Ashwin’s figures at the end of the bowling powerplay read 3-1-7-0.

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Impressed with his command,Dhoni kept Ashwin on the backburner until the 34th over,pre-empting the batting powerplay. Dhoni dropped Mahela Jayawardene that over,but Ashwin didn’t give up until he had his man in the next the first over of the batting restrictions. Jayawardene tried to sweep himself out of the shackles that Ashwin had put him in,but ended up lobbing one straight to Rohit Sharma at square-leg.

Dhoni made amends for his drop by giving Ashwin his second and third wickets with two stumpings. The first of those came in the last over of the batting powerplay,as all-rounder Thisara Perera the man who had ballooned SL’s score in the World Cup final stepped out of his crease to go for a big one. And then again in the 44th over,when top-scorer Dinesh Chandimal mirrored the Perera leap for the same result.

“Very impressive,” said Dhoni of Ashwin’s figures of 3/32 in 10 overs. “Since Praveen had an off day,it was important for someone to take on that extra responsibility. Ashwin did that. The first three he bowled in the first powerplay,the next three in the second and the rest during the slog overs.”

But little would Ashwin have known that he would be required in yet another powerplay,the batting one of his side. When Virat Kohli ran himself out on the last ball of the 36th,India were 181/6. Another wicket,and they would have been staring down the barrel. But Ashwin had a different ending in mind,as he played the shot of the day off a Malinga yorker through the covers for four. He sprinkled his unbeaten innings of 30 with two more sparkling pulled boundaries off Dhammika Prasad and Angelo Mathews,before Malinga turned the serious ending Ashwin had in his head into a comical one.

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