Follow Us"I believe life is a circle, for some people, it's a small one, for some it's large For me, understanding patterns in my life and career is something I've done very well over the last couple of years.”
Ravichandran Ashwin, just after making his comeback to India’s white-ball team in late 2021, after a four-year-long hiatus from the limited-overs team, went on philosophical, once again. After all, he was making a comeback after a long lull - something that he had least expected at the prime of his career. For the career had taken a different term and the bowler, who had first made ripples as a sun-glass-wearing T20 star in the IPL, was stereotyped for only the longest version of the game. As astonishing as it might seem, it had its own bizarre consequences.
"The easiest way to cope with it, to go through a professional circle like that is to keep preparing to keep working hard, expecting an opportunity to turn up at your doorstep one day and when it happens you have all the options to break open doors, latches, and locks. That's what life is all about, so live for those days and keep preparing as that day will come.”
It is difficult to predict if May 20, 2022 (Friday) would don a few pages in Ashwin’s Dear Diary but if it was about proving a point, then at some point in time, he would cite it. On Friday, it was not as if Ashwin was being used as a floater and trying to maximize the outcome of the promotion, but rather it was about him using his experience to muster a run-chase that had already been distilled.
The game didn’t really matter for CSK but for the Royals, there was a lot riding on it. They needed to win this encounter in order to finish in the top two, and thus get that one extra chance to qualify for the final. It was a game that they needed to win to reinforce the belief that they were not some one-trick-pony, who could be tamed just by asking to chase.
Throughout the season, Ashwin has been an interesting case study of how to use your resources, in terms of entry point and timing, rather than going gung-ho about the full-on approach. When Ashwin came out to bat last night, high-flying Yashavi Jaiswal made his way back to the pavilion and Shimron Hetmyer couldn’t pass off as the show-stealer either. It once again came down to Ashwin to ace the chase that still needed 75 more runs.
The beauty of cricket lies in the fact that no matter your ability and your experience, it eventually boils down to your understanding of the conditions. The knowledge of how the wicket behaves is a must-know. And who better than Ashwin to judge the intricacies of the wicket and manipulate his way around.
"Even though we've played in Mumbai, all three pitches have played very differently, keeping Pune aside. DY Patil has a bit of steeper bounce and it's one of the truer batting wickets going around in the competition. It's a little bit slower through the first half, Wankhede has been quite different to what usually Wankhede has been and CCI has been quite skiddy and flat. According to that usage of stance, and match-ups against which bowler...there's been a concentrated effort on what areas I've been working on.
“Usually, I tend to go back and across and try and slog the ball down the leg-side, it's pretty easy to bowl. So I've tried to open up the wider range of options for me and I'm extremely confident I can clear the ropes when required so that confidence is most important as I can understand the ebbs and flows of the game pretty decently."
In a world, where guts and gumption take the major part of the narrative-building exercise, Ashwin acknowledged the importance that his understanding of the pitches played in that regard. His slog-sweep six to Prashant Solanki and then going underneath Mukesh Choudhary and depositing that ball onto the CCI stands were a clear demonstration of the fact that Ashwin knew that negating the movement and using that extra pace would be the key. That eventually resulted in a win that the Royals would savour so much, and hope to bridge past to honour the memory of the first-ever IPL-winning captain, Shane Warne.
"Batting is one part of the sport that is massively driven by reputations and many a time being primarily a bowler I get to bowl a lot in the nets and the batsmen occupy most of the time inside the nets. When you're batting at No.8 or 9 you probably get to bat once or twice in 3-4 games if your batting line-up is doing well, but the fact that they told me that you will be opening in the practice games, you will be used in the power play and the number of repetitions I was given and the simulations... all these things really help. I've been quite innovative in terms of trying to adapt to new techniques and I'm very thankful to the people who have put work behind those and hopefully I can put on a few more good performances like this."
As Rajasthan Royals skipper Sanju Samson claimed that a Top 2 finish is nothing less than what RR have deserved for their performance this year, Ashwin would further play a pivotal role in the final hurdle. And like many things with Ashwin, it is this adaptability that the Royals would fall back on.