Team India began their campaign in the World Test Championship (WTC) 2023-2025 with a remarkable victory in Dominica on Friday. Rohit Sharma and his boys defeated the West Indies by an innings and 141 runs in the first Test, leading the 2-1 match series 1-0. Yashasvi Jaiswal and veteran off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin were the two major architects of the victory. While the former played a scintillating knock of 171 runs on Test debut, the veteran bowler ended up picking up a 12-wicket match haul.
The Windies batter opted to bat after winning the toss but most of them surrendered to Ashwin’s wizardry. After bagging a 5-wicket haul in the first innings, the off-spinner returned figures of 7 for 71 in the second.
Meanwhile, former Indian opener Aakash Chopra reviewed the game in his latest YouTube video in which he seemed to be in awe of the off-spinner.
“Ravichandran Ashwin is a different beast altogether. If you see his class, if the ball goes away with the arm, he gets the outside edge, and then he bowls the ball slower, and it turns after pitching, hits the pads or goes through the gap between bat and pad, or hits the bat and pad and goes to short leg,” Chopra said.
“There he got two or three extremely beautiful dismissals like that. Then when the left-hander Alick Athanaze was batting well, he got him caught at short leg off bat and pad. Whether it is a left-hander or a right-hander, he is very effective, very impressive,” he added.
Chopra further highlighted Ashwin’s double five-fers, stating that the off-spinner likes West Indies a lot.
“Seven wickets for Ravichandran Ashwin, and 12 wickets in this match for Ravichandran Ashwin. He likes West Indies a lot and he proved that thing right once again,” Chopra further said.
The Dominica track least assisted the home bowlers but turned out to be a hunting ground for Ashwin and his spin partner Ravindra Jadeja. The dup picked up 17 out of 20 Windies wickets, with the former bagging 12 and 7 for Jadeja.
Indian skipper Rohit Sharma was all praise for his spin twins and looked forward to taking the momentum to Port of Spain.
“The results speak for themselves, they have been doing it for a while. There isn’t much to tell them, it is about giving them the freedom to express themselves. The experience these guys have on pitches like this is always a luxury. Both Ash and Jadeja were superb, especially Ashwin for coming out and bowling this way was class. Always nice to start well, it is a fresh cycle,” Rohit said in the post-match presser.
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