Mark Watt and R Ashwin

Mark Watt has elaborated on how advice from R Ashwin indirectly helped him get Glenn Maxwell out in Scotland's final match of the T20 World Cup.

Scotland's campaign came to an end with a narrow loss against Australia, which kept them level on points with England but with an inferior net run rate. Watt took figures of 2-34 in that game, dismissing all-rounders Glenn Maxwell and Marcus Stoinis.

Speaking on the Wisden Cricket Weekly podcast, Watt detailed how a conversation with R Ashwin following India's match against Scotland in the 2021 edition of the tournament, helped him improve his game preparation. "It was bizarre actually," said Watt. "They'd just beat us in Dubai and I really wanted to speak to him [Ashwin] and pick his brains on a few things. I said, 'How do you prepare for the game, do you do much analysis?' And he said, 'I do so much analysis, even yourself batting at No.9 ot 10 for Scotland, I still do analysis on your batting'. I was like, 'If he's done analysis on me I need to pull my finger out here and start doing some proper analysis'.

"He told me all the things that he thinks about and that he writes them down, that kind of secures it in his memory for him. I couldn't remember a thing so that's when I started writing down the notes. And at the next World Cup I pulled out the notes and had a look."

Footage of Watt checking his notes during Scotland's win over the West Indies the 2022 T20 World Cup went viral on social media. Watt took 3-12 from four overs in that game.

"It's quite a lot of in depth analysis about each player that I couldn't remember," Watt said of his notes. "I was terrible at school as well, my revision tips needed a bit of [work], I needed some cheat sheets as well. So I just bring on a piece of paper that has four or five bullet points for each batter. I'll have a quick look at what their strengths are before I bowl to them. And then I'll set my field and have a plan in place.

"But it's brilliant that these players are so kind and want you to get better, and he [Ashwin] was just brilliant with me. I realised that I needed to put a bit more work into what the other batters are doing well and how to counteract that. It's something that I took on board and said 'Right, that's what I'm going to do If he does it', and it's worked out really well."

In the match against Australia in St Lucia, Watt bowled Maxwell with a beauty that hit the top of off stump. He followed up by also castling Marcus Stoinis to give Scotland hope late in the chase.

When asked whether he implemented Ashwin's advice against Australia, Watt responded: "Yeah - Maxwell, exactly what I wanted to do, keep him on the backfoot, hit the top of off. And it paid off. Because normally he plays those reverse sweeps but I was like, I'm going to bowl my best ball and if he starts to hit that, then I can change to plan B. But thankfully I didn't need to go to plan B and got that big wicket early."

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