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Marnus Labuschagne: Facing Ashwin was like playing in a chess game
World No. 1 batsman in the Test cricket format Marnus Labuschagne has said that he looks forward to the opportunity of batting against a great bowler like India’s Ravichandran Ashwin and deemed him as a “great thinker of the game” as well.
“He is very good at assessing batsmen, and that’s why I have enjoyed facing him,” Labuschagne told Sportstar.
Ashwin was in amazing form when he played the last Border Gavaskar trophy and had managed to take 12 wickets in the three test matches that were played against Australia. The Indian spinner has a tally of 430 wickets now and is only four away from matching the Indian cricketing legend Kapil Dev’s tally of wickets.
In a recent interview, Ashwin spoke about how he picked up certain cues from whenever Labuschagne was batting. He said “He steps out, he hits the ball over cow corner for an offspinner, or he hits it over mid-off. It’s very rarely through long-on. And he doesn’t have a flat sweep, he has a lap sweep, like a paddle. All these shots have a trigger. And it’s very fine. If you don’t know or if you’ve not seen enough footage, you cannot pick these things up,”
When Labuschagne was told to recall all the past encounters he had with Ashwin from the four-match Test series on the 2020-21 tour, he said: “He has picked up some things I do when I play certain shots. That’s why I love these four-five match series because you cannot be satisfied with what you’ve got as a batter, otherwise, you will be found out by quality bowlers. You’ve to keep adapting.
“What I loved most about Ashwin was the fields he had for me and how I was trying to move the field in my endeavour to score runs. Just the way both of us were able to chop and change in the middle of an engrossing passage. It almost felt like a chess game. He bowled beautifully in Melbourne… got a few early wickets with the leg slip.
“Smith and I played him well in Sydney. We’ve got a few subcontinent tours before my next trip to India, and hopefully, I can challenge myself in those conditions. I have a few tricks up my sleeve (smiles)!”
Ashwin and Jasprit Bumrah’s leg traps were more than enough to get the better of the Australian power-packed batting lineup in the Test series. However, both batters still scored a good amount of runs in Sydney, with Smith even getting a first-innings hundred and Labuschagne falling short of one by nine runs. Labuschagne did attribute the turnaround to the change of venue and conditions as he said “In Sydney, the wicket was better, you could trust the bounce and play those leg-side shots… it wasn’t so much a tactical change from Melbourne to Sydney as the conditions got better for batting and we were able to bat freely on the on side,” he said.
“We started in Adelaide and it was quite hard to score over there because the pink ball and the wicket had variable bounce. Melbourne had a little bit of grass and I got 48 off 150 (132) before being caught at backward square.
“In the second innings, Ashwin got me out at first slip – from round the wicket, he bowled the undercutter… what you need to remember is certain shots are just harder to play in certain conditions… I can have a plan to negotiate the fields but sometimes you are undone by the venue.”