Hello,
that reset sequence along with the 500ms wait on both occasions helped!
one issue i faced is that the reset sequence is not treated well in the documentation. no matter how simple it needs to be explained well with accurate timing diagram.
the other issue was that i had initialized the SPI module on program startup. On ANT reset, the module pulls the clock pin low and then high once. My msp430 interpreted this as one clock cycle and read 1 bit of data. then after 500ms, when the ANT module transmits the 0xA4 message, my SPI module read only the first 7 bits and thus i received garbage data. issue resolved courtesy logic analyzers!
thank you.