India spinner Ravichandran Ashwin picked up his 8th ten-wicket haul against West Indies in the first match and by doing so, the off-spinner equalled the record of Anil Kumble for the most 10-wicket hauls by an Indian in Test cricket.
Ashwin’s 12 wickets in the Test match helped India thrash West Indies by an innings and 141 runs in the first Test in Dominica. He also went past 700 wickets during the course of the game in international cricket.
The 36-year-old is on 709 wickets and is the 16th Test player to go past 700 wickets. He is two wickets behind Harbhajan Singh. With West Indies’ fragile batting, the crafty off-spinner may surpass Harbhajan in the next Test in Trinidad.
Ashwin picked five wickets and seven in the second. The West Indian batters looked clueless, especially in the second innings and hardly showed any resistance against Ashwin. It became so routine for him that the master off-spinner even stopped celebrating his wickets.
When Ashwin had the impressive debutant Alick Athanaze caught at short leg, the writing on the wall said that the Test won’t see a fourth day. A victory margin of an innings and 141 runs points to a one-horse race.
All but eight of the 50.3 overs in the second innings were bowled by the two Indian spinners, and 17 of the 20 West Indian wickets in the game were shared by Ashwin and Jadeja.
“I would like to start by saying it was a great effort with the ball,” Rohit said after the game.
“Getting them out for 150 set the game for us. We knew batting would get tough, it wasn’t easy to score runs. We knew we wanted to bat only once and bat long. Get over 400 runs and then came out and bowled really well,” he added.
