Was a good, tight game: Ashwin
First Published : 26 Nov 2011, 02:00
Last Modified : 26 Nov 2011, 02:00
Mumbai, Nov 26: R Ashwin was adjudged Man-of-the-Match and Man-of-the-Series at the conclusion of the third and last Test against the visiting West Indies side for his all-round performance.
The offspinner claimed nine wickets and scored a century in the last match here besides taking India close to victory on Day 5. Despite his brilliant batting display, the thrilling match ended in a draw with scores level.
Excerpts from his media interaction:
On what was going through his mind in the final over when India needed three runs to win
The last two overs I thought Ishant [Sharma] was playing well and the field was up for the other side so I thought probably we had a better chance of squeezing a boundary through. I thought I would turn the strike over and see if we could get a boundary; [then] we would almost be there. Unfortunately it didn’t fire and [when] the last two balls were left I thought I should take the safer option of defending for one ball rather than taking a chance off the last ball. It didn’t work out unfortunately.
On the lessons from the Test series – a dream start to his Test career
[I’m] taking the confidence that I am able to perform the same way as I did in first-class cricket [from this series]. That doesn’t mean it is an easy ball game; I will have to take it much more seriously and work on different facets of the game and try and get better.
On whether he had imagined such a thrilling Day 5
Honestly we didn’t think it was going to go down to the wire. We definitely thought we could prise them out and try and chase the score down, but probably we lost a few wickets in the middle and made things tough for ourselves. At the end it was a very good game and tight game. [It’s] part of history, probably.
On whether the pitch had changed on Day 5
As the ball got old I thought the ball bounced and stopped on the batsmen a little more but it was by no means unplayable. [Pragyan] Ojha bowled really well to knock off the first five [wickets] and at the backend I also hipped in a bit with a few wickets and it helped us to roll them over early then we actually thought we could [win].
