Ravichandran Ashwin's absence in the World Test Championship final started a buzzing debate on how the senior off-spinner deserved a place in the squad. The 37-year-old's recent 500-wicket mark proved that he still has something to give to this game. Ashwin also became only the third off-spinner to achieve the feat and continues to be the second-highest wicket-taker for India behind Anil Kumble, who ended his career with 619 scalps.
Playing his 98th Test, Ashwin did speak about the darkest phase of his career when he felt that he was hitting a bottomless pit. "For me, life has been all about ups and downs and the lowest point was the phase between 2018 and 2019. I was the ICC Cricketer of the Year and I was on top of the world and from there to go to a bottomless pit, was a very dark time in my life," Ashwin told Kumble after the end of play on day two.
"Generally I am not someone who is fazed by the downs of life because when I have a good day, I just talk to my parents, and my wife and watch good movies and go to sleep. When I am down, I am not really beaten and I do think about it and always come out on the other side of it. "But that was a dark tunnel for me as I didn't know what hit me and how I got placed there. And then I had a couple of injuries, adductor strain and it was a dark phase and when I thought, I was almost done then," he revealed. However, the COVID-19 pandemic gave him the perspective and he rediscovered what he loved most playing cricket.
Following the Kumble and Harbhajan Singh era, Ashwin had big shoes to fill and he has done that with remarkable consistency. In his first 16 Tests, Ashwin snared nine five-wicket hauls and became the fastest to the 300-wicket club.
"We were hit by the pandemic and it gave me a really good reflection of life and what I wanted to play for, find new meanings. This game is all I love and I think I had lost the love for that and I had to rediscover it." Ashwin has been one astute reader of the game, who is very aware about his numbers and he didn't shy away from admitting that 500 wickets do mean a lot. "Look I would be lying if I say 500 doesn't mean anything. It does mean a lot but it has not sunk in yet like I said, from 2020, the way I look at the game and the way my life has been is very different to what it was earlier," he added.
"Sometimes playing becomes a job and you look at it as a profession and the moment it happens, then it can get monotonous and lonely. Rediscovering the joy of playing the game is the greatest unraveling of who I am," he said. Having made his Test debut in 2011, Ashwin has come a long way. The engineering graduate from Chennai started as a top-order batter and tried his hand at medium-pace bowling before settling for the role of an off-spinner, a decision that was forced by a back injury during his teenage years.
"The desire to excel hasn't changed and evolving as a cricketer has remained very organic to me and the first question that hung in front of me was whether I was a good enough red ball bowler because I had come through IPL." For Ashwin, his critics have also helped him grow. "More than people who teach you, I think the critics take you very high, if you want to take criticism in the right yards and make the right effort, I think excellence is the only way forward," he concluded.
(With PTI inputs)
