At the 2011 Cricket World Cup, R Ashwin was no more than a fringe player, turning out in just two of India’s nine matches. The off-spinner from Chennai played second fiddle to the more experienced Harbhajan Singh, who played in all of his country’s games, including the historic final against Sri Lanka in Mumbai.A little over two years later, Ashwin had become skipper MS Dhoni’s go-to man. In a truncated final of the 2013 Champions Trophy in Birmingham, Dhoni turned to his number one spinner with England needing 15 runs for victory off the last over. Ashwin conceded just nine to the ninth-wicket pair of James Tredwell and Stuart Broad as India trooped out victors by five runs.
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That had been India’s last global title until the T20 World Cup success in June. Up until then, they had tilted at the windmills in 50-over and 20-over World Cups, in the Champions Trophy (2017) and the World Test Championship (2021) but have, at best, failed at the final hurdle. Ashwin was considered superfluous to India’s limited-overs scheme of things for four years between 2017 and 2021 until he returned to competition ahead of the T20 World Cup in the UAE in 2021, but not even he could help end a drought that is fast reaching worrying proportions.
Ashwin has had a stirring journey of craft and mind, of hunger and ambition and desire. An aspiring batter in his formative years when he batted in the middle-order for the country at the Under-17 Asia Cup, his transformation as one of the greatest off-spinners ever hasn’t come about by accident. His batting skills haven’t deserted him – he has five hundreds and nearly 3,000 Test runs – but it is as a bowler that he has caught the imagination, plotting and luring batsmen to their doom.With 442 wickets from 86 matches, the 35-year-old is the unquestioned greatest match-winner of his generation as far as India are concerned, though the inevitable asterisk will follow him to the end of time – his inability to make a significant impact outside the sub-continent and the Caribbean, where the pitches no longer bear any resemblance to the pacy, bouncy, spiced up decks that greeted all-comers until the end of the last millennium.
Indeed, from the exalted status of being the obvious No. 1 spinner of his team in overseas Tests, Ashwin has now to operate in the not-inconsiderable shadow of Ravindra Jadeja when India field only one spinner away from home. Given the profusion of pace riches at first Virat Kohli and now Rohit Sharma’s disposal, the spinner’s role overseas has come to be a defensive one unless the conditions dictate otherwise on the rare occasion. Left-arm spinner Jadeja is viewed as more suited to that role, capable of holding one end up, bowling long spells without giving much away, allowing the quicker bowlers adequate rest before they come back refreshed and recharged, and adding value with his vastly improved left-handed batting and his brilliance in the field that alone is worth a place in the XI.Like all cricketing journeys which have amounted to something, Ashwin’s has been one of trial and tribulation, of uncompromising hard work and, of extraordinary highs and debilitating lows. In some ways, Ashwin was lucky that he was born into a middle-class Tamil family in South Madras (as Chennai was then known). Surrounded by uncles (and aunts) as well as neighbours who talk cricket 24×7, it is inevitable that one’s theoretical knowledge is sound – or at least profuse – by the time you actually pick up a bat or a ball. By the time you play for your school and, if you are good enough, in the ultra-competitive Tamil Nadu Cricket Association league, you have a good base to work with, though what you did with the knowledge you possessed was entirely up to you.
Fortunately for him, and Indian cricket as it turned out, Ashwin ticked all these necessary boxes. His early schooling was at Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan; his first alma mater didn’t necessarily ‘encourage’ cricket, if you get the drift, but they didn’t read the riot act or lay down the law so long as you cleared all your exam papers in first-class. That was never a problem for Ashwin, him of the sharp mind that has allowed him to work out batsmen with the same meticulousness as he did challenging questions in the exam paper.Once he moved to St Bede’s Anglo-Indian Higher Secondary School, the diametrically opposite outlook of the institution from his old school proved a Godsend. In cricket-mad St Bede’s, all was well if you played cricket, and played it well. Education could take a back seat. But while that was the school’s philosophy, his parents were having none of it. In India in those days – we are talking about the early 2000s here – like it is now, and especially in Tamil Nadu where a premium is placed on education, Ashwin’s parents insisted that cricket and education co-exist if they must, but they would settle for nothing less than an engineering degree. That qualification, the unsaid understanding was, would serve as an insurance if his cricketing career didn’t not quite meet his ambition of representing the country.
Almost every professional sportsperson who has had a career of any significance and length will have at least one major injury setback to speak of. For Ashwin, that came very early in his life, in his mid-teens when he was just one of million starry-eyed kids hoping for the rub of the green to go their way. Laid low by a debilitating back injury, he was at the crossroads of a career that had yet to take off. At least three specialists in Madras told him that for him to lead a life with a semblance of normalcy, he had no option but to bid goodbye to cricket. It was a crippling blow for a 16-year-old, who saw his dreams crumble in front of his eyes even before the early seeds could begin to think of germinating.Desperate to get his cricketing journey back on track, the family even contemplated surgery but a kindly-souled doctor patiently but emphatically made it clear that surgery wouldn’t do anything for the heartbroken teenager. His suggestion was simple, yet almost unthinkable for some of that age – six months of complete rest. No walking around, let alone even entertain visions of approaching a cricket ground. For half a year, Ashwin was bedridden. He spent hours sobbing his heart out when he heard kids playing cricket in the streets outside his house. In a show of steel and gumption that would later become his calling card, he came through that trying period with great success, though that long break from normal life as we all know prevented him from developing the athleticism that professional competitive sport demands.
The transformation from a kid whose hopes hung by the most tenuous of threads to someone who could now seriously aspire to translate those hopes into reality was complete in the immediacy of his Grade 12 exams. Ashwin left the comfort of his Chennai home to embrace the uncompromising and character-forming life of Mumbai. He turned up at the various maidans in the country’s financial capital to play as many matches as possible in different tournaments, staying in a Paying Guest accommodation and navigating the eddying currents of living on one’s own for the first time with steely determination. More accustomed to the relaxed lifestyle in Chennai, he was forced to make instant and large-scale adjustments to cope with the hustle and bustle of the Maximum City. Those who have made the commute times without a number for several years might find it hard to comprehend, but for a Chennai lad to take the packed local trains every day and to stick at it despite being hemmed in by a sea of people required great fortitude.That Ashwin had set stall as a first-class cricketer long before he was noticed for his exploits with Chennai Super Kings in the Indian Premier League is hardly a secret, though the general impression is that he is an out-and-out IPL product. Ashwin had more than 50 wickets in the Ranji Trophy when he made his debut for CSK; at the franchise representing the city of his birth, he showcased his versatility and intelligence, falling back on the mechanics of engineering – unsurprisingly, he claimed the degree with great ease – to buttress his burgeoning craft.
Not content to be an also-ran, Ashwin began to think, eat and sleep cricket. His obsession to keep getting better was overwhelming and sometimes scary to those around him, but he wasn’t to be deterred. When he was asked how he could be so consumed by the cricket bug to the exclusion of all else, he has gone on record as saying, “When a scientist talks about science all the time, no one questions him. Then why question a cricketer if he talks cricket always? Science is the scientist’s life, cricket is a cricketer’s.” Hard to fault that logic, though at various stages, Ashwin’s greatest strength has also been his most obvious enemy.One of the pitfalls of having so many tricks up one’s sleeve is the unquenchable desire to keep trying them out in a match situation. His lack of overseas success in Test cricket has often been attributed to his lack of patience – an irony that, given that any quality spinner’s greatest virtue is oodles of patience – which propelled him to bring all his variations into play in the quest for wickets. It’s standard practice for an off-spinner to have a stock delivery – the one that breaks into the right-handed batsman. General convention suggests that this must be the ball used the most, and with more frequency than any other. All the other variations are just that – variations that ought to be employed judiciously so that they carry the element of surprise. In his bid to go looking for wickets, Ashwin neglected employing his stock delivery to a great degree. Pedigreed teammates and illustrious retired cricketers pointed out this anomaly more than once, but Ashwin remained unmoved, convinced that his methodology was the best mode of operation. It wasn’t until he was forced to reinvent himself once he found himself out ...
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