‘I Told My Wife, Australia series could become my last’- Ashwin: The World Test Championship exclusion handed Ravichandran Ashwin’s outstanding Test career a serious blow. The No. 1 rated ICC Test bowler, Ashwin, despite having 474 Test wickets, in the top-10 in the world, over the course of a career-spanning over a decade, was dropped by India versus Australia in the final, which they eventually lost by a margin of 209 runs.
The off-spinner, who considers himself to be one of his biggest critics, spoke candidly about the heartbreaking selection made by the team’s management and said he would have loved to play in the title-deciding match.
Ashwin on being left out of the WTC final playing 11
Ashwin expressed the wish to participate in the WTC Final in an interview with the Indian Express after the final game since he had contributed to the team’s success in getting there.
An interviewer asked what Ashwin thinks is the reason for his being snubbed. Ashwin replied, “It’s a hard question to answer, right? Because we are standing right after the WTC Final. I would have loved to play because I have played a part in us getting there. Even in the last final I got four wickets and bowled really well.”
On the overseas performance, Ashwin said, “Ever since 2018-19, my bowling overseas has been fantastic and I have managed to win games for the team. I am looking at it as a captain or coach and I’m just talking in hindsight, in their defense. So the last time when we were in England, it was 2-2 with a drawn Test and they would have felt 4 pacers and 1 spinner is the combination in England.”
“That is what they might have thought going into the final. The problem is for a spinner to come into play, it must be the fourth innings. The fourth innings is a very crucial facet and for us to be able to put that amount of runs so the spinner can come into play, it’s completely a mindset thing,” he added.
‘I Told My Wife, Australia series could become my last’- Ashwin
In that interview with Indian Express conducted a week after the Indian team management’s WTC decision, Ashwin discussed the knee injury he sustained during the Bangladesh Test series last year. After the trip, he admitted to his wife that the BGT series in February 2023 would likely be his last competitive outing.
He also said he would like to change his bowling action somewhat because the previous action had caused his injury.
“I’m very proud of what I’ve done in my life not just because of wickets or runs. But how consistently I have been to able to reinvent myself. One thing that really plagues cricketers or anybody as they grow old is insecurity. For me, it’s how cricketers get locked when they get older and when they get experienced; you want to hold on to something so tight, that you eventually end up breaking your own neck,” he said.
“When I came back from Bangladesh, I told my wife that the Australia series could become my last series. I used to have some knee issues. I told her ‘I am going to change my action’ because it really got a lot of momentum and with that when I was landing, my knee was buckling a little bit. I hadn’t done enough workload because of the T20 World Cup but I was not just not happy with the way the ball was coming, it was just scrambling a little bit here.”
“By the second Test (in Bangladesh) it started to pain. It was really swelling up. So just thinking okay, how do I do this? Because I bowled really well for three-four years, right? To change my action, it’s got to be the most stupid and ridiculous thing to do. So I came back and said, listen, there’s a lot of load on the knee, it’s time to change and I’m going to go back to my action that used to bowl in 2013-14,” he added.
“So I went to Bangalore, I had to take an injection at that point in time, so, I changed my action. I started bowling and my knee pain went away. I practiced for three-four days in Nagpur and I went into the Test match without having played a game with that action at all. On the first day of the Test, I didn’t even feel like a bowler for three to four overs but I was able to get on with it because of the awareness I have,” he concluded.
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