The India off-spinner, who went to 500 wickets in the series says England's "defenceless" approach was admirable but always gave the hosts a chance
Ravichandran Ashwin has admitted England's aggressive approach put India under "unique pressure" in the recently concluded Test series but feels they took it "too far".
Ashwin, who finished the series as the leading wicket-taker with 26 at 24.80 as India wrapped up a 4-1 victory, believes Australia would have taken advantage of the relatively flat batting tracks to have drawn a couple of games, but labelled England's approach as "defenceless cricket".
And he expressed his surprise that a batter as accomplished as Joe Root should adopt such an approach.
"The one thing I understood after the first Test is that Bazball isn't just aggressive cricket," Ashwin said on his YouTube channel. "It is defenceless cricket.
"They played brilliantly, put pressure on us and went 1-0 up in the series. Full credit to them.
Ashwin, who brought up 500 Test wickets during the series, was India's leading threat with the ball (Gareth Copley/Getty Images)
"Because of this new England approach of going for the kill, they put us under unique pressure. Them playing three sessions is equal to us playing six sessions in terms of runs scored. So every match was bound to finish in an outright result. They put us under pressure to constantly do something and create something out of nowhere.
"If this series had been against Australia instead of England, we would have seen two draws. They were outstanding batting wickets.
"Many of the shots they played were inexplicable. Zak Crawley, most of the time, plays on the up. It's very risky. It's a 60:40 shot. Five of every 10 balls will go to the boundary. But one ball will be a wicket.
"They aren't going to play a defensive shot at all. They are going to get out if they play defence. To my surprise, Joe Root also agreed to their game plan. Because if you take world cricket's best defence rankings, Root is an easy No.1 on that list against spin. He also bought into their approach."
Having been dismissed in a somewhat controversial fashion in Rajkot, attempting to reverse ramp, Root actually played in more familiar fashion over the last couple of Tests. He subsequently scored an unbeaten 122 in Ranchi and 84 in Dharamsala.
Ashwin also appeared somewhat irritated by some of England's punchy talk.
"James Anderson went into a press conference in the second Test after winning the first," Ashwin said. "Much respect to them for winning that. He told the press that even if the fourth innings target was 500 or 600, we'll finish it in 60 overs.
"Even though it was an example of their positive mindset, it felt like they had gone too far."
Anderson may feel that something was lost in translation over that comment. While he did remark that England's batters would probably approach a target in such fashion, it felt at the time as if his words were somewhat tongue in cheek.
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