THE BOWLERS

8. RAVICHANDRAN ASHWIN

What a year this man has had. What impact he has been exerting on the Indian team since January 2015. No matter how tired you have become of praising him time and again, this gentleman doesn’t cease to surprise you and compel you from making such lofty exclamations more often than not. The engineer turned cricketer has scalped 62 Test wickets in this calendar year; the most taken by a bowler in 2015 so far. Despite the fact that he made a scratchy start to his Test campaign in 2015, the spin wizard from Chennai kept improving with each outing in Indian colours and has today reached a stage where he has equalled a cerain Sachin Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag’s record of winning 5 ‘Man of the Series’ awards in Test matches. The off-spinner started off the year by picking up 5 wickets at the SCG in the final Test of the 2014/15 Border-Gavaskar series, followed it with a five wicket haul against Bangladesh in Fatullah and further boosted his reputation by scalping 21 wickets and 31 wickets against Sri Lanka and South Africa respectively. Former Sri Lankan batsman Kumar Sangakkara was tormented throughout Sri Lanka’s home series against India where Ashwin dismissed him on 4 occasions. Ashwin has also made significant contributions down the order at No. 8, having struck 2 valuable fifties against Sri Lanka and South Africa this year. The 29 year old has taken 41% of all Indian wickets and 70% of all five wicket hauls (7 out if 10) and two 10 wicket maidens since June 2015. He is currently ranked 2^nd in the ICC Test Rankings for bowlers and 1^st in the ICC Test rankings for all-rounders.