“It is just one box ticked. You don’t think about such things when you go into a game,” smiles Ravichandran Ashwin as he begins to talk about his maiden five wicket haul against England. “It’s just like one monkey off my back but I really did enjoy my bowling. I had a plan and I stuck to it. It didn’t come easy but it came through. I knew I would get through once I got the third wicket. Sometimes when you want that five-wicket haul or if you are desperately going after it, you can miss a thing or two when you don’t stay in the process. The most important thing is being in the process and enjoying it and correcting if something is going wrong. I am still in that phase where I am really enjoying it. I seem to be enjoying my cricket a lot now with bat and ball. When you start enjoying, you don’t really feel the work load or the pain and that is the phase I am in.” Ashwin’s figures at the end of the England innings read a ball less than thirty overs, with six maidens and five wickets. It wasn’t that the ball was turning fair and square or was asking a lot of questions of the batsmen. Yes, there were a few occasions when the ball dipped or shot up suddenly but it was far from a cakewalk bowling on this wicket. “This wicket is probably a touch slower than Rajkot. For the fast bowlers, it is more up and down and for the spinner there is not a lot of bounce,” assessed Ashwin. “The challenge here is that the edges are not carrying to the slips nor is it carrying to the bat pads. It is going to the bat pads at relatively faster speeds because the ball is shooting along. It is very important to build pressure from both ends and then try and create that one good ball. You won’t get magic balls often on this wicket.” But going into the fourth and fifth day, was more spin expected off the pitch? “That’s what we hope for eventually,” he said. “Everybody comes up with the clichéd statement that Indian pitches start spinning on the third day. I played first-class cricket for too long to tell you that it doesn’t spin that much. The wicket is going to be challenging in terms of the bounce. It is going to start getting lower and lower.” Shifting focus to day 2, Ashwin had already bagged two with the priced wicket of Joe Root - a wicket that was meticulously planned and got Ashwin pumped up. “Root was batting very well and using his feet well. I thought he had some preconceived thoughts on stepping out,” Ashwin began to explain Root’s dismissal set up. “The best thing about it was that I got a good spell going through. The ball was coming out of my hand beautifully and I had a lot of confidence. I went and chatted with Virat of trying and getting him out on the drive to short midwicket. We kind of positioned a slightly wide-ish midwicket where he could go through and probably chip it there. “Then Virat came out with a thought of pulling the mid-on in so that we could try and get him to swipe through straight and it worked perfectly. I was actually looking for a dismissal towards cow corner where he would chip it and go there. I saw him stepping out a bit early and I just threw the ball wide. I think because of the spell I was in, the ball drifted a wee bit more as well.” Giving Ashwin good company at the other end were Ravindra Jadeja and debutant Jayant Yadav who were bowling tight lines to put a tab on the run-flow. Ashwin had some words of appreciation for the young off-spinner who was just about taking baby steps in his international career. “He is a very talented kid. He is an intelligent boy and it is easy to communicate with him. I have a very personal rapport with him and I like him a lot. He is someone who is very keen to learn. I am very sure he will go places.” But what kind of conversations are the off-spinners having on and off the field? “We both speak about minor tweaks and technical changes. We discuss a lot about it. He is a very humble kid and learns very quickly. I am no techno expert when it comes to judging his bowling. For me, bowling is all about your head and how you can plot dismissals. It is all about trying to take leeway from what you are seeing in the game and setting good fields. It is about bowling to plans and trying to identify what is uncomfortable for the batsmen. Those are the things you can share with the bowlers.” India are now 98/3 at stumps on Day 3 with captain Kohli leading by example with a brisk half century. Going forward, Ashwin believed it won’t be easy be it for the batsmen or the bowlers. Both would have to work to come up trumps. “I don’t think it is going to be easy and none of the teams have blown out each other in this series so far. It is very important that we plunge deep tomorrow and we try and bat well and get a good score for them to chase. We can then bowl at a lot of score and have men catching around. We will try and see how much pressure we can create.”