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Ashwin Had AB de Villiers For Breakfast This Morning

The world's best batsman had no clue how to counter the India off-spinner.

The foundation of AB de Villiers’ brilliant stroke-play is the precision of his movements: limbs, eyes and willow moving harmoniously to set up the perfect platform that launches ball after ball into the orbit.

Today, however, AB was all arms and legs against Ravichandran Ashwin.

AB was struggling to read the off-spinner, coming down one ball, playing back on another. Ashwin was getting acute turn and getting the ball to drop out of AB’s reach.

In the 24th over, Ashwin got an offie to rip past batsman and keeper for four byes. This played on AB's mind and forced him to rethink his tactics.

Next ball, he tried to sweep Ashwin and missed.

Then, he charged down the pitch and barely managed to pad the ball out of the reach of the close-in fielders.

The next ball, AB played back and completely misread the carom ball, probably expecting the delivery to turn a bit.

The ball straightened to trap him in front of middle stump for what may be the easiest LBW ever given.

Watch what happened: