Ravichandran Ashwin: A constant innovator for whom cricket was the be-all and end-all
Ravichandran Ashwin: A constant innovator for whom cricket was the be-all and end-all
Few who have represented the country have been as deeply immersed in the sport as Ravichandran Ashwin. While many have shown unwavering dedication to the game, cricket has not always been their sole obsession. With Ashwin, however, it seems to be just that — his everything.
 "Ravichandran Ashwin: A constant innovator for whom cricket was the be-all and end-all")
Rohit Sharma first played for the country in June 2007, Virat Kohli’s maiden India appearance wasn’t until the following August. Nearly two years on, an unassuming off-spinner from Chennai, who played for India as a top-order batter at the Under-17 level, broke through into the limited-overs set-up, played his first Test in November 2011 and quickly established himself as the premier match-winner of his generation.
On a damp, bleak Wednesday at the Gabba, the scene of one of India’s greatest triumphs in Test cricket in January 2021, the said off-spinner called it quits from international cricket, with 765 wickets for the country across all formats and 537 in the five-day game alone. Among Indians, only Anil Kumble, the great leg-spinner from Bengaluru, has more Test wickets (619). At the time of his retirement, only six bowlers had taken more wickets in Test cricket than Ravichandran Ashwin, the engineer who took off-spin to great heights.
When Rohit and Kohli look around the dressing-room over the next several months, they will find a giant-sized Ashwin hole. Over the years, they have grown used to having each other around. To bounce ideas off, to share a joke and a laugh, to maybe occasionally argue and debate. To engage in leg-pulling, to put their heads together to plot the downfall of batters and oppositions.
Ashwin: The constant innovator
Ashwin never led the country, and it is one of the few regrets he will carry with him, but he has been a leader in his own right. Solitary leader of the bowling pack for the longest of times until he found company in Jasprit Bumrah, but also a leader in setting benchmarks, in striving for excellence, in trying to keep raising the bar, in constantly attempting to better himself. As professionals go, few can stand as a more shining role model than the 38-year-old.
Extraordinarily effective at home but hardly a pushover outside the subcontinent, Ashwin’s craft extended beyond just off-spin. Indeed, for a long time, his versatility was held against him, his unwillingness to invest almost exclusively on his stock delivery a source of much consternation, if not angst. But that’s quintessential Ashwin. A restless cricket mind that refused to allow him to rest on his laurels constantly drove him onwards and upwards. Occasionally, that meant that like a batter with so much time and so many strokes, he was hoist with his own petard, but it was a small and acceptable trade-off, given how many strings he decorated his merciless bow with.
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It takes a special mindset to keep turning up at nets and trying something different each day with the singular goal of becoming even 0.1 percent better at the end of it than at its beginning. Ashwin has lived and breathed and slept and dreamt cricket for so long now that as he enters the next chapter of his life, he will have to invent new challenges, find newer vistas to keep his sharp mind occupied. But he is far from lost entirely to cricket as a player. He will still continue to play franchise cricket, the Indian Premier League for now and perhaps many other tournaments in time to come, and he will play club cricket back in Chennai when the mood seizes him. He will join an impromptu game in his street too, because to him, a game of cricket is a game of cricket – whether it is in India colours or in the backyard, with no audience worth the name.
Few who have played for the country have been so consumed by the sport as Ashwin. There are others who have been totally committed to the cause, but for them, cricket has not been the be-all and end-all. One suspects with Ashwin, it almost is. He has a young family that now requires more of his time and that might in some ways have precipitated his mid-series retirement, ala Mahendra Singh Dhoni in Melbourne in December 2014, but cricket will continue to occupy prime position in his mind space for the foreseeable future because it is impossible that the two will ever be mutually exclusive.
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Nothing has given him greater delight than going up against the best and getting the better of them. Nothing has thrilled him more than the prospect of cutting off the head of the snake. Nothing has energised him more than using the air as his ally if the surface has been unresponsive. It’s not that he did not enjoy ‘cheap’ wickets, but it was when he was forced out of his comfort zone and still found ways and means to lure top-notch batters to their doom that Ashwin allowed himself a self-congratulatory pat.
Ashwin’s love for game knew no boundary
Like a scientist who thinks about his area of speciality 24 hours a day, Ashwin’s focus has been playing cricket, and playing it well, to the standards he has set for himself and the standards that others have come to take for granted. That’s the ultimate compliment, the confidence of his mates that when the team is in a spot, Ashwin is around to bail him out. With the ball, most times, but also with the bat, where he cut a dashing, elegant picture with the effortlessness of his timing and the time he had at his hands to play the quickest of bowlers.
Ashwin will believe he was worth a lot more than 3,503 runs from 106 Tests – with six centuries and an average of 25.75 – and he can’t be blamed for that because of the natural batting gifts he has been bestowed with, but once he became the bowling spearhead, the batting sort of became a secondary vocation. He still did turn the clock back from time to time, such as when he made 113 under pressure against Bangladesh in his beloved Chennai this September. But the passage of time, a protesting body and the need to put more into his bowling to get more out of it meant that the secondary skill suffered, though not due to neglect.
Retirement from international cricket has been on Ashwin’s mind for a while. He didn’t start the ongoing series in Australia as Washington Sundar was preferred for the Perth Test, and when Rohit joined the team midway through that victory, Ashwin told his great mate that he felt his time was up. He did play in Adelaide, but there was no grand public farewell because no one knew at the time that it would be his last Test. When Jadeja was preferred to him for the Gabba faceoff, and with no guarantee that he would be needed in Melbourne and/or Sydney, Ashwin decided the time was ripe for him to hang up his boots. After all, India’s next home Test isn’t until October against West Indies.
Ashwin will be missed, of that there is no doubt. True, Jadeja is still around and Washington Sundar, the younger off-spinning all-rounder from Tamil Nadu, is gradually making waves. True, Bumrah is the unquestioned bowling ace now and true, pace will have a bigger say for the next ten months, with India also playing five Tests in England in the summer. But Ashwin, well, they don’t make them like him anymore, do they? That, as much as anything else, will be his lasting, enduring, endearing legacy.
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