India vs Bangladesh: How Ashwin and Iyer rescued India from troubled waters

India managed a three-wicket victory in the second test over Bangladesh to complete a 2-0 series win.

Bangladesh gave India a huge scare as India found things a lot blurry than they should have been despite a modest chase of 145 runs.

Mehidy Hasan Miraz gave India a hit in the final hour of the third day, as the visitors lost KL Rahul, Cheteshwar Pujara, Shubman Gill and Virat Kohli to finish the day on 45/4.

India's slump continued on Sunday as nightwatchman Jaydev Unadkat was the first to go. Rishabh Pant and Axar Patel followed him soon as the visitors were reeling at 74 for 7, still needing 71 runs.

Shreyas Iyer and Ravichandran Ashwin:

Shreyas Iyer and Ravichandran Ashwin then played the crucial part. Together the pair added 71 runs on the 8th wicket to complete the series win. Iyer scored 29 unbeaten runs while Ashwin managed to score 42 runs. It was also the 5th time in India's history that an 8th wicket partnership in the final innings of a test match yielded 50+ runs.

Harsha Bhogle on Ashwin and Shreyas Iyer #CricketTwitter #cricketnews #INDvsBAN pic.twitter.com/yptEBSbGXf

— myKhel.com (@mykhelcom) December 25, 2022

How Ashwin and Iyer rescued India:

Shreyas Iyer and Ravichandran Ashwin did a couple of things differently than the rest of the batters, and it helped them.

Firstly, they both trusted their attacking approach rather than defending. Even Ashwin said so in the post-match interview that he was much more reliant on his stroke-making, rather than trusting his defence against the spin of Miraz and Shakib.

Secondly, once they settled, they started the counterattack and put the bad balls away. None of the India batters prior to them showed the courage to give it a go. You can see this from the scorecard. Gill (7 off 35 balls), Kohli (1 off 22), Pujara (6 off 12) all were guilty of blocking out the balls instead of a positive approach.

These two things combined to turn the tide in India's favour. Shreyas Iyer was the aggressor at first. He hit three boundaries in three balls to up the gear for India. A vibrant Bangladesh side was chattering a lot before that around Iyer.

'Hobe Hobe' (yaa, it will happen); 'aar ekta wicket chai' (we just need another wicket); 'shoabi kotha bolte thako' (keep talking everybody to create more pressure) - all these chirpings around the wicket stopped or decreased significantly after those three boundaries. It broke the first barrier for the pair as things were a lot calmer around their vicinity.

Ashwin, meanwhile was dropped on 1 when India was on 80. Mominul Haque spilt a simple grab at the forward short-leg as India survived there. Then on, and after the hat-trick of boundaries from Iyer, things started to get easier. Ashwin, who was more recessive till then, found two boundaries of Khaled Ahmed's bowling as India got closer to their target.

Bangladesh skipper Shakib Al Hasan brought back Taijul Islam and Mehidy Hasan Miraz but Ashwin and Iyer kept rotating the strikes to negate their effectiveness big time. As the day progressed, the lethality of the spinners also diluted significantly. India needed 16 runs when Miraz came to bowl with the hope of breaking the pair.

But Ashwin was in a hurry. He hit the first ball of Miraz over mid-wicket for a six. The right hand came off the handle after completing the shot, but it had enough power to clear the fence. Then he got a couple of runs through the third-man area. In the final two balls, Ashwin hit two consecutive boundaries to secure the win for India.

It was a fantastic performance from Ashwin who reached another milestone in the test match. He became the 2nd Indian player to score 3000+ runs and have 400+ wickets in test matches. It was the experience head of Ashwin that helped India ride the pressure and get over the line high and dry.

Shreyas Iyer, who has just started his test career, showed immense class. Iyer, who generally bats at no. 6, came into bat at no. 8 and in hindsight, it helped India's cause. Had he not been there with Ashwin, things could have gone the other way. He was assured of his approach, never looked in awe against the Bangladeshi spinners, and was clinical to dispatch bad deliveries. Iyer started the movement for India which was later finished by Ashwin.

In the end, it speaks volumes of the Indian team at the moment. There seems to be someone who is always there to raise his hand and drag the team out of adverse situations.