Ravichandran Ashwin was in fantastic form throughout the recently concluded Test series in Sri Lanka, picking up 21 wickets – including the prized scalp of Kumar Sangakkara in each of the retiring legend’s last four innings. This form was a continuation of his near-perfect rhythm and the way the ball has been coming out of the hand, in his own admission, over the past year or so.
Ashwin’s form prompted India Team Director Ravi Shastri to say, that on current form, he is the best off-spinner in the world: “Ashwin was amazing in Sri Lanka. And that’s because he was patient and relaxed. For him to understand his own bowling and what the team needs off him was the need of the hour. And I think he has realised that.”
“We know he has got the brain of an astronaut. He has combined that intelligence with calmness and patience now. That bodes well for us because now the astronaut’s mind is helping Team India take flight,” added Shastri.
In a free-wheeling interview, Ashwin gives a fair indication as to what prompted Shastri to make that comparison. The outspoken spinner goes into great detail about the amount of work that has gone into his bowling over the past few years, and how much of the work has been in terms of the knowledge he has gained in his time as an international cricketer.
“The knowledge [about his bowling, about offspin, about body mechanics, about his action] I have right now is far more than what I had a couple of years ago,” Ashwin said. “What mistake all of us make when we are talking about a particular cricketer is that we say they are trying too much, the control is not there, there is no patience. These are clichéd terms.”
“If only patient cricketers were good cricketers, then only yogis could have been good cricketers. It’s more about skill, and the amount of knowledge you acquire over a period of time,” said Ashwin.
Ashwin also goes on to talk about how he worked on his ‘loading issue’ on delivery stride, the revs on the ball, his modified action and its limitations that made him realise what he needed to work on when he was dropped from the side for a while.
“I am aware of my bowling. I am very aware of what I’m doing. It does happen some times when you take a bit of time, but more often than not the error I commit is mental and not physical. Because I try to be as aware as possible when I’m trying to make the shift. The error was there in terms of my body alignment. The loading was a bad habit that had crept into me. To identify that and correct it we needed someone,” Ashwin said, referring to the influence the current bowling coach Bharat Arun has had on his recent good form.
Ashwin also speaks about how he is as a person in the dressing room and how his inquisitiveness about his own game has often been mistaken to be at best over-analysis, and at worst bad attitude.
“Sometimes, when I ask questions and you don’t have the answers, you either call me an idiot or you say I think too much. The fact that I have questions means I am a learner. It doesn’t mean I have got attitude [problems],” Ashwin said.
“There are times when not just me, even Sachin Tendulkar would have had somebody telling him to keep things simple, because it is a complicated game. We see failure more than success,” he said.
While cricketers and sportspersons are becoming refrained from giving frank assessments about themselves and are increasingly more media-trained, it is refreshing to get well-articulated insight from a player at the top of his game.