Breaking records: Ashwin equals Muralitharan’s player-of-the-series feat

After playing a key role both at bat and with the ball in India’s convincing 2-0 victory over Bangladesh in a two-match Test series, Ravichandran Ashwin recently won a record-tying 11th Player-of-the-series award. By winning the most of these honors in Test history, Ashwin has officially tied the record held by the legendary Muttiah Muralitharan of Sri Lanka.

In 2023, India’s first series of the current ICC World Test Championship cycle was a two-match Test series against West Indies. With 15 wickets and a half-century, Ashwin was the series’ standout player as the visitors won 1-0. He was allegedly one of the favorites to win player-of-the-series, but the accolade was not given out following the end of the second Test in Port of Spain.

According to the article, Cricket West Indies (CWI) has placed the responsibility on an Indian organization that was in charge of managing the series’ sponsorship. The aforementioned agency asserts that CWI is concerned about player-of-the-series. Even though it wasn’t done during the competition, the winner should have received the award.

With 11 wickets at the end of the Bangladesh series, Ashwin and Jasprit Bumrah shared the most wickets total. But he beat his colleague from India for the prize because of his outstanding century in the Chennai Test, which enabled the home team to overcome a difficult situation. The 38-year-old will next be seen playing, beginning on October 16, in a three-match Test series against New Zealand. At the moment, he holds the second-highest wicket total in Test history for India, having claimed 527 from 102 matches, including 37 five-wicket innings.