Batting great Sunil Gavaskar feels that veteran India spinner Ravichandran Ashwin and premium pacer Jasprit Bumrah are some in several aspects of the game as they both are not happy to pick just easy wickets. Ashwin and Bumrah were stars of India’s emphatic win over Sri Lanka in the pink ball Test at M Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bengaluru. Bumrah claimed his maiden fifer in Test on Indian soil in the first wicket, while the veteran offie spun his web around Lanka batters in the second innings to get four scalps under his kitty.
“Jasprit Bumrah, who got into Test cricket after Ashwin, is exactly like Ashwin in the sense that he is always looking to add to his repertoire. That is what Ashwin does. At a time a year and year-and-half-ago, Ashwin was trying leg-spin because you can as variety ball bowl that, especially if you have got 500 runs in the bank,” Gavaskar said on Star Sports.
The former India captain said that Ashwin and Bumrah are aggressive bowlers who always look to create doubts in batter’s minds with some experiment in their bowling.
“He is not afraid to experiment. Yes, he might hit, that’s the nature of the game. But the fact that he is doing something different and wanting to create doubts in the batter’s mind. He and Bumrah are so similar in that aspect, aggressive bowlers, wanting to get wickets and not just happy with getting those easy wickets. They want to make sure they have got the batters.”
Gavaskar further asserted that Ashwin has the ability to emulate the Test wicket tally of legendary India spinner Anil Kumble who claimed 619 wickets in the longest format of the game.
“It’s still a fair distance to go, we are talking about another 160 wickets. But he is capable of doing that because he just keeps getting better. He doesn’t rest on his laurels,” Gavaskar said.
