R.Ashwin: Is he as Great or a Better All Rounder for India than Kapil Dev?

Finding the right team balance a long standing issue for Indian Team

Indian cricket team has seen great players over the ages from M.A.K.Pataudi to Sunil Gavaskar, B.S.Bedi, Chandrashekhar, Prassana, Kapil Dev, Dilip Vengsarkar, Ravi Shastri, Azharuddin, Sachin Tendulkar, J.Srinath, Zaheer Khan, Anil Kumble, Ganguly, Dravid, Laxman, Dhoni, Virat Kohli, Sehwag, Gambhir and lots more.
To add to that list, we have current team with players like Murali Vijay, Rohit Sharma, Pujara and R.Jadeja and Ashwin.
Yet till a long time, India often had a befuddling problem- whether to go with 6/7 key batsmen and a part time bowler plus four bowlers to provide batting depth, or going with five full time bowlers but with a risk of lesser batting depth.
Occasionally allrounders like Kapil Dev and Mohinder Amarnath/Ravi Shastri came and provided depth to Indian team with both batting and bowling capabilities.

Yet with the arrival of a player named Ravichandran Ashwan(or mostly written as R.Ashwin) there is a sudden shift in the way the Indian team is playing especially in the Test matches.

A great allrounder named Ravichandran Ashwin

In the recently concluded fourth test match with England at Mumbai, Ashwin scalped 12 for 167 to help India beat England by an innings and 36-runs. He is now routinely taking five wicket an innings and 10 wickets a match hauls.

Statistically, he has 247 wickets at an average of 24.22 and an economy rate of 2.91 off just 43 Tests. This is outstanding, and indicating that he will be going to break a number of records. He can even perhaps surpass Jumbo-Anil Kumble’s 600 plus wickets in his overall career. He has 24 five-wicket hauls in 80 innings and seven 10-wicket match hauls.

To add to this, consider some of his exploits in batting:
1)He has hit 4 centuries and nine half-centuries so far, leading to a total of nearly 1800 runs in his test career. A great fear in his nearly five years of playing whih shows his allround prowess.
2)He completed 500 runs in his 11th test match in 2012. He became the fastest player alomgside allrounders Australian Jack Gregory and Englishman Ian Botham to complete the double of 500 runs and 50 test wickets.
3)In 2016 calendar yearm he has taken 50 wickets and 500 runs, thus becoming one of the few players to have achieved this.
Even if India have lost 2-3 early wickets, its opponents know that a person named Ashwin will be there and could be difficult to dislodge. Ashwin’s technique also is quite good and he has also played some good innings on tracks outside India, like against West Indies in West Indies.

Is R.Ashwin better than Kapil Dev in allrounder ability or not?

All the Ashwin’s feats so far leads to a question that whether as an allrounder he is better than the best allrounder India has had so far- Kapil Dev. Ashwin’s run scoring ability and technique shows him in a better position than Kapil Dev.
Also, he has been taking wickets at a higher clip.

In defence of Kapil Dev, one might say that most of his wickets intestingly came from dead or slow turning Indian wickets, which are in a way unsuitable for pace bowlers. Secondly, Kapil Dev played against fast bowlers like Dennis Lilee, Thompson, Joel Garner, Michael Holding, Colin Croft, Ambrose and Malcolm Marshall, who many times used deadly bouncers. Also, for quite some time, Kapil played in an era where helmets had not yet been used.

Overall, this is still a debatable question, but to summarize, the kind of performance Ashwin is giving, he will fnd a unique place in Indian cricket history.

Source: https://sports.ndtv.com/india-vs-england-2016-17/r-ashwin-spinning-tales-of-one-series-win-after-the-other-1636885
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