With his outstanding double in the recent Chennai Test, Ravichandran Ashwin indisputably joined the pantheon of great all-rounders in international cricket. There appears little doubt that, given good health and freedom from injury, he will equal or surpass Anil Kumble’s record of Test match wickets. That his batting, admittedly a thing of beauty, has entered a brave new phase, too, was announced by his sterling rearguard action in the company of fellow all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja, when all seemed lost for India in the first innings at Chepauk, his home ground. To be able to score yet another hundred in the circumstances he overcame in that knock suggested an almost monk-like quality of shutting out the surrounding noise and chiselling a display worthy of a master craftsman.  

I will not dwell on the many records the off spinner-batsman has smashed with that century and the six-for that followed—almost effortlessly, it seemed. Nor will I try to dissect his bowling into its many fascinating parts. I shall, instead, try to deconstruct his stylistic, temperamental and intellectual evolution from the brash young challenger he was to start with into the mellow master we marvel at today.  And let me be totally honest, I was not an admirer of his methods for quite a while even as he marched on to conquer statistical heights, winning series after series for India in the process. For I had been brought up on the aesthetically pleasing orthodoxy of Jim Laker, EAS Prasanna and S Venkataraghavan, even enjoyed the pre-doosra-obsessed Saqlain Mushtaq, and the supremely confident Graeme Swann. Not for me the relatively ungainly modern genius of Muttiah Muralitharan or Ashwin, which regardless of its astonishing success, failed to move me in quite the same manner.