Worcestershire’s new overseas player signing, spinner Ravichandran Ashwin, has played a major role in helping India achieve a rare feat in their history.
Their 3-0 whitewash of Sri Lanka – completed this week – was just the second time they have won three Tests in an away series.
The only previous occasion was a 3-1 success in New Zealand in 1967-68.
Ashwin, the reigning ICC World and Test Player Of The Year, ended the Sri Lankan series with a personal tally of 17 wickets including a return of 4-68 in Sri Lanka’s second innings in the third Test in Pallekele.
It lifted his Test wicket haul to 292 in 52 Tests at an average of 25.26 – many of them since he worked successfully on remodelling his technique two years ago.
Ashwin became the second fastest bowler to 200 wickets in Test history and won four successive man of the series awards.
He will arrive at New Road next week fully tuned and ready for action after a busy few months in what is a massive statement of intent by the County in their bid to gain promotion.
The 30-year-old was part of the Indian side surprisingly beaten in the ICC Champions Trophy final by Pakistan at the Oval in mid June.
Just five days later he was a member of the India side taking on the West Indies in a ODI-T20I series in the Caribbean.
Then he moved on with his team-mates to Sri Lanka for the Test match clean sweep with victory margins of 304 runs, an innings and 53 runs and an innings and 171 runs.
