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Follow UsSometimes, things just fall into place.
The rationalists call it being at the right place at the right time. The theists call it the hand of God. And those who believe in destiny rejoice in the fathomless fortunes of fate as it reveals itself in such an overt fashion.
So, after the COVID pandemic was over, Indian women sat it out at their homes for more than a year. It was clear that their leg spinner, Poonam Yadav, wasn’t bowling at her best when they returned to cricket. In fact, not just her. The entire spin attack of India was looking toothless.
Between the time they resumed cricket post-pandemic and the Women’s Premier League (WPL) started, the Indian spinners took a wicket only after 41.3 deliveries on average in ODIs and gave away 33 runs for each wicket they took in that period. That’s the fourth worst bowling strike rate and average for spinners amongst the top 10 teams in the world.
The WPL started in 2023, and after two successful editions of the tournament, we got three new spinners who impressed with their performance and were readily included in the India setup: Shreyanka Patil, Saika Ishaque, and Asha Sobhana.
Asha’s emergence was even more crucial as post Poonam Yadav, India were in dire need of a leg spinner.
At this point, you can choose the term for this happenstance based on your beliefs. The fact remains that Asha Sobhana was meant to debut for India at 33. Things just fell into place for her, and in her brief stint with the national side so far, it’s clear that her story isn’t ending anytime soon.
With one T20 and one ODI World Cup in the next year and a half happening in Bangladesh and India, respectively, India couldn’t have timed her entry into the setup better.
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June 16, 2024
India vs South Africa, 1st ODI
Making her debut in the format at her WPL home ground — the Chinnaswamy Stadium — Asha was all swagger, skill and bowling in ‘keep-calm-and-just-do-it’ mode. After years of toiling in the dark alleys of women’s domestic cricket in India, this was another opportunity for her to create an instant impact right at the start.
Just like she did in the first game of WPL 2024, where she picked up a fifer.
The ground was the same. The audience who had cheered for her in red and blue then, were doing the same for her now in blue when she raised her hands above her head in her action, leapt, landed, and delivered the ball.
India had already reduced the visitors to 33/3 after making 265 in the first innings on a track with seam movement and slight turn. Under lights and in Asha’s hands, the ball didn’t just slightly turn. Her leg spinners also drifted prodigiously into the right-handed batters in the air and after pitching, turned away from them.
The Proteas batters, apprehensive about attacking the bowlers throughout the innings, became cannon fodder as Asha’s guile and skill gobbled them up like a Malayali uncle drinking Payasam on Onam Sadhya.
Asha got four wickets for just 21 runs that day, the second-best figures on ODI debut for any Indian woman. In the 21st century, no Indian bowler debuted better than Asha Sobhana.
No sense of awe about the occasion. No sense of novelty while making her debut. This was classic Asha, the swaggy wickets celebrator who claimed her share of blue skies in Bengaluru that day.
However, if you look at her bowling in the first edition of the WPL, you’ll not see the same drift, zip or turn in her bowling that you would have seen in WPL 2024, the T20I series in Bangladesh a month ago, or the first ODI against South Africa.
It’s because Asha wasn’t as good as she is now. To her credit, she sought out spin coaches like Laxman Sivaramakrishnan, who saw her bowling in the WPL and offered her free coaching. She worked with him, then toiled hard at the domestic level or the Puducherry team.
Those efforts were instantly visible. Her hands weren’t all over the place. She conserved her momentum by coming in much straighter lines and then, after the jump, released the ball with much more force from her shoulder.
These minute improvements in her action allowed her to put more rotations on her deliveries and improved her seam position (which helped her drift the ball in the air). All this helped her turn the ball much more, and the wickets started coming thick and fast.
In WPL 2023, she averaged just 28.4 with the ball, with an economy of 8.4 and a strike rate of 20.4. In 2024, she gave seven runs less per wicket, 1.3 runs less per over on average, and struck every 13th delivery. Even in domestic cricket, she averaged a brilliant 11.62 with the ball in the 2023-24 season, which was much better than last season's 77.6.
This is a spectacular improvement, and to the selectors, Amol Muzumdar and Harmanpreet Kaur’s credit, they saw the work she put into her game and how she translated it into performance. Her steely temperament forged in the unforgiving fire of struggle that is Indian women’s domestic cricket stood out even more.
She is still predominantly a leg-break bowler (just like almost all other prominent international leg spinners in women’s cricket), and her googly is a work in progress. Additionally, that disadvantages her against left-handed batters, and she turns the ball into them with her leggies.
Despite these areas that she still needs to work on, India have finally got a leg spinner worthy of her salt. Maybe that’s why Harmanpreet Kaur was so emotional while giving her the ODI debut cap. Maybe that’s why Asha Sobhana nearly teared up, too, probably unable to believe how the tables turned on her in two years.
Asha means ‘hope’ in many Indian languages. As Amol Muzumdar and Harmanpreet look at the ICC tournaments on the horizon, Asha Sobhana is that hope for Indian women to help them break the trophy drought.
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