R Ashwin became the fourth Indian bowler to take 400 wickets in Tests recently.
Former Indian cricketer Gautam Gambhir has picked Ravichandran Ashwin's spell to Steve Smith in Melbourne Test in December 2020 as the best he has ever seen in Test cricket.
Ravichandran Ashwin had got the number of Australian batsman Steve Smith during their recent tour down under. In the second Test match at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, Ashwin returned with figures of 3/35 in the first innings. He picked the wickets of Matthew Wade, Steve Smith and Tim Paine.
Even though the battle between Smith and Ashwin was talked about a lot, it turned out to be pretty one-sided with the off-spinner winning it hands down.
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Gautam Gambhir told ESPNCricInfo during the Runorder show, "The best spell I've seen in my career… forget about my career, probably since I've started watching cricket, was his spell at Melbourne. I have faced Murali a lot, faced Saeed Ajmal a lot, have played against Harbhajan a lot in the nets and I’ve faced him as well."
"But the spell that he bowled in Melbourne in the first session of the second Test match and that also against Steve Smith, it was the pinnacle of off-spin bowling. It can’t get better than that," he added.
The southpaw from Delhi has played a lot of cricket with veteran spinner Harbhajan Singh. He is still a better off-spinner than Ashwin in overseas conditions according to Gambhir.
"Harbhajan hands down, just with the kind of bounce he used to get. Ashwin doesn't get that bounce, especially when he goes to Australia, England, or New Zealand or probably even South Africa," Gambhir said in the same show.