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If you take spinners as T20 commodity, that’s where you will finish them: Ashwin

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The competition bar to sustain a place in the Indian team is rising with every passing series. We witnessed some new match-winners on the recently concluded tour of Australia when players like Mohammed Siraj, Washington Sundar, Rishabh Pant, Shubman Gill and Shardul Thakur stepped up to take the responsibility and won the series for India. 

Some similar competition has been there as far as the spin department is concerned. Sundar made his Test debut on this series while someone like Kuldeep Yadav didn’t even get a match to don the Indian jersey. 

In a chat with The New Indian Express, R Ashwin talked about the spinners and how making them a T20 “commodity” will not help them. 

“When I came through the first-class ranks, my first captain was S Badrinath and coach was (WV) Raman. The learning I had under them is not the same for spinners coming right now. I was having a chat with Wasim Jaffer and Amol Muzumdar and that’s one of the reasons. Another thing is the amount of grass and the number of wickets the seamers take... games that finish in the first two days with seamers taking a lot of wickets to throw spinners off guard.”

“Spinners are someone who emerge because they do a lot of repetition and get a lot of games in FC cricket. If you are taking that away from the spinners and look at them as a T20 commodity, that’s where you will finish them. I feel there are talents but the way they are dealt with in first-class cricket is not the same as the privilege I had of being mentored by my captain and coach,” he said. 


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Decided to compete against Steve Smith: R Ashwin

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