R Ashwin tops strike rate charts for Test spinners in last 100 years; beats Shane Warne, Muttiah Muralitharan in process

Ashwin was named man of the series after he finished with 27 wickets in India's 3-0 series with over New Zealand.

New Delhi: Ravichandran Ashwin concluded his emphatic performance in the New Zealand Test series by dismissing Trent Boult in Indore on Tuesday evening.

Ashwin was India's chief architect throughout the series and he himself brought a befitting end to a game he dominated and helped India whitewash the visiting Kiwis 3-0 in the series.

Boult's wicket was Ashwin's seventh in the second innings and 13th of the match, giving the offie his career best figures of 13 for 140 as Kohli and Co out-muscled the visitors by 321 runs in the third Test.

Ashwin, who was named man of the series after he finished with 27 wickets in a 3-0 sweep by India, has 220 wickets, the most by any bowler after 39 Tests.

Ashwin's performance becomes all the more commendable when stacked against the Test spinners who have been active in the last 100 years and have 100 or more wickets to their name.

The 30-year-old's strike rate of 49.4 stand on top when compared to any Test spinner who has 100 wickets or more in the last 100 years.

A bowler’s strike-rate can be defined as the average number of balls bowled between successive wickets. Simply put, the Chennai-born bowler gets a player out every 50 (49.4) balls in the traditional format of the game.

Following Ashwin are the names of Stuart MacGill, Muttiah Muralitharan, Shane Warne, Grame Swann, Rangana Herath, Nathan Lyon, Johnny Wardle, Saeed Ajmal, BS Chandrasekhar and Anil Kumble.

If the 100-year bracket is removed, Ashwin sits third behind two English bowlers – Johnny Briggs and Colin Blythe – who were active before the year 1910.

Sitting top of the latest ICC Test rankings, Ashwin finished the 2015 year-end rankings as the number-one bowler and was also at the top briefly in July this year.

He has now joined a select band to have touched a rating of 900 points since 2000, the others being Muttiah Muralitharan, Glenn McGrath, Vernon Philander, Dale Steyn and Shaun Pollock.