India vs England 3rd Test: Ravichandran Ashwin, cricket’s rare alternate take
Pushing the boundaries of possibilities, milestone man Ashwin brings to the game much-needed verve and ingenuity.
Last June, Ravichandran Ashwin did something unthinkable—he took a review of a review. This was during a Tamil Nadu Premier League (TNPL) match, after a batter had successfully overturned an on-field caught-behind decision. But Ashwin’s logic was simple: he wanted a referral from a different angle as he felt the video evidence wasn’t conclusive enough.
Third ball of the 102nd over on Friday, Ashwin pushed Rehan Ahmed towards cover and set off for a run, only for Dhruv Jurel to send him back. But as Ashwin had already begun sauntering down the middle of the pitch—a zone strictly out of bounds—umpire Joel Wilson awarded five penalty runs to England on account of it being India’s second offence of the innings. Ashwin turned back, marked his crease before walking up to Wilson to clarify his point of view. Wilson didn’t change his mind but Ashwin nevertheless wanted to be heard. That’s Ashwin for you—asking questions, seeking alternate views, always trying to push the boundaries of possibilities.
“The thing is he always enjoyed his freedom of speech, always had a very inquisitive mind, a natural hunger for learning. And he always posed questions, which isn’t necessarily seen in a very positive light in our society,” says former India opener WV Raman, Ashwin’s coach at Tamil Nadu. “People don’t like to be questioned. But you also need to ask questions in order to learn. People may not necessarily have a uniform opinion about Ashwin. I think he has paid the price for it also, in certain ways. But it doesn’t stop him from being his own self.”
Five hundred wickets wiser now, impassioned doesn’t even begin to cover the way Ashwin probably feels for the game. Senses tethered to the sport and its ecosystem, Ashwin dissects and questions every facet of cricket while constantly striving to stay ahead as one of the finest practitioners of spin bowling. If he isn’t playing, Ashwin is watching cricket, reading up on it, staying up to date with every new rule, improvisation and quirk the game can offer, analysing and previewing senior matches, and even IPL auctions of late. And he is ridiculously good at it.
Be it predicting Amazon Warriors would win the 2023 Caribbean Premier League, or tipping UP big-hitter Sameer Rizvi to land a massive IPL bid before the 2024 auctions or coming up with the most comprehensive analysis of the World Cup final defeat to Australia, Ashwin’s reviews and analyses have been so on point that this doesn’t feel like a side gig at all.
At some level, it can all be traced back to a deep-seated obsession for the game. “When you talk about passion in modern day cricket, I think it’s Ashwin,” says Raman. “I can’t see Ashwin staying away from cricket. He might even resort to playing tennis ball cricket with kids after a few years. That’s the kind of passion he has for the game. He is absolutely cricket mad.”
There’s more. When the pandemic put an abrupt pause to our lives, Ashwin started nerding out on cricket, interviewing teammates, opponents and former players. Having found an instant mass connect, Ashwin built on that base to talk about things beyond cricket—regaling the mass with dressing room stories, seeking suggestions on chess moves, raving about crime dramas and Rajinikanth, discussing Minnale (later remade into Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mein) with Madhavan, sharing and amplifying vital information during the Chennai floods last December and quizzing the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association (TNCA) treasurer on fan engagement and ticket sale problems before the ODI World Cup.
That Ashwin is succeeding to maintain this level of simplicity and objectivity makes him a rare character at a time athletes hardly make an effort to be more than multi-brand endorsed stars guarded about expressing their opinion on anything beyond their perceived realm.
At the heart of this unpretentiousness beats the mindset of not being bound by the norm. Spirit of cricket was thought to be ruined in the wake of Ashwin running out Jos Buttler at the non-striker’s end during the 2019 IPL but he has always steadfastly put forward his side of the argument—why leave the crease till the bowler doesn’t complete his action? Till he doesn’t, as Ashwin said once, “we should applaud the bowler and tell the batsmen (sic) he can do better.”
Same goes for Jonny Bairstow who was run out by Australian wicketkeeper Alex Carey last year after he had wrongly presumed the ball to be dead. Coming out in favour of Carey, Ashwin then wrote: “We must applaud the game smarts of the individual rather than skewing it towards unfair play or spirit of the game.”
To excel in a sport which requires rigorous physical coordination on a daily basis is itself a huge achievement for Ashwin, feels Raman. More so, when his career graph hasn’t had a logical curve to it. No 1 pick at home, dropped more overseas because someone else is presumed to be a better batter (often not the case), Ashwin has been almost flawless in carrying a sense of injustice with a smile. But that hasn’t prevented him from being an uncompromising critic of the game. It has pushed him, no doubt, to a point where he may be viewed as cynical about most of the positive turns of life. As is the case with Ashwin though, nothing feels out of place.
