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Follow Us“Ok, tributes can wait for another day. Can we undo this, please?” read a tweet from @cornerd.
Ravichandran Ashwin’s retirement couldn’t have been summed up any better. Can we undo this retirement, please? Sitting here in Bengaluru, the announcement took me several minutes to digest.
So much so that instead of being a rationale human, all that the brain could think about was if there was some sort of politics in the dressing room or some sort of tiff.
When the rumours were there, it seemed like a joke. But like they say, sometimes even the worst of jokes turn out to be a devastating truth. Ashwin will no longer be part of the Indian dressing room; there’s no way you will see him sit alongside Hari and his laptop, looking at the varying footage.
You won’t see Ashwin sitting alongside a fierce competitor like Gautam Gambhir, fighting about India’s tactics any longer. You won’t see him on the ground ahead of a big contest eloquently talking about the nitty-gritty of modern-day cricket, be it the ebbs and flows that a cricketer has to handle or the tactical evolution of the sport.
No longer will you see Ashwin egg the opposition with his pause; no longer will you see him innovate the ‘dull’ and boring art of off-spin into a hippie art form. No longer will there be a figure of dependability for India at home; no more of ‘throw the ball to Ash’ and wickets will follow.
Even if he’s 38, you knew you could sleep knowing that India’s spin bowling is in safe hands. You knew India could beat any team and tackle hurdles if he was there alongside Ravindra Jadeja. You knew a monster would come on to bowl and torment your team once the pacers were done.
Possibly, like me, you are also going to spend quite a few hours thinking about how much the game has evolved over the years and how Ashwin has been a part of it, not just as a passenger but as someone who has taken a keen interest towards the game’s evolution.
How about the commentators, who were trying to analyse what new Ashwin is up to? If anything, this retirement could be a shock because of how entertaining and yet boring Ashwin was whenever he bowled.
There’s no more guessing game that the commentators have to play, trying to decipher whether Ashwin is bowling an offie or he’s trying to bowl a carrom ball. Ashwin was an enigma, a scientist who probably locks himself up in a room, trying to Moneyball the **** out of the game of cricket.
Even imagining that there will no longer be any press conference where you’d get to share the same space as Ashwin is quite a frustration. He’s the first to criticise his game and appreciate his teammates, and if anything, back them to the tilt.
Ashwin backed him to the tilt when the world turned heel on a young Rishabh Pant for his wicketkeeping. That’s one of the biggest things that Ashwin has taught me over his playing career: nothing in this world is perfect.
Even when Pant was raw as a wicketkeeper, all Ashwin had to tell the journalists was that don’t compare him to Dhoni; he’s Pant, a unique player. ‘Give him a break’ were the words that helped Pant develop into this monstrous cricketer.
You will learn very well from Ashwin’s career that nothing is perfect.
There’s nothing called a fairytale ending; there’s nothing called a perfect finish. Because if there existed one, you would still be waiting and anticipating for Ashwin to play in Sydney.
But you know there will be several dozen left-handed batters, non-strikers, Aussies, English and Kiwi people who would be thanking their stars, for Ashwin has given them endless nightmares over the years.
Those were all just realizations that the game would no longer be the same.
The real tribute is all those memories that you remember.
When Ashwin was still an up-and-coming cricketer in 2007, I was nine, and he was 21. Naive and unaware of how cricket was going to shape my life. But even then, the streets of West Mambalam were already mumbling about how this tall, lanky guy with not a very clean action would make the world his oyster.
He was always there and thereabouts, playing tennis ball cricket, and inviting people from the area to participate in his tournaments. I knew that I had to keep a keen eye on this off-spinner. In just four years, I wasn’t just keeping a keen eye anymore; I was looking at someone confident in his own skill, in how he approached his game, and who had the entire world starting to notice his extraordinary thought process.
A few months later, that same lanky guy perhaps gave me the biggest joy of my life as a teenager: the absolute sheer schadenfreude of watching Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) lose when he picked up Chris Gayle's prized scalp. I remember how that moment was almost a rarity, and the celebrations went wild. I couldn’t stop running around the room, taunting the RCB fans.
And, when Australia toured India multiple times in the aftermath of the World Cup, I couldn’t help but swear at Ashwin for the way he strung the best Australian batters I have seen. He perhaps single-handedly has destroyed the careers of left-handers like it was a joke.
Such was the love-hate relationship; even though you wanted to see Ashwin succeed, you didn’t want him to do well against your team. Or when he made us all painstakingly stay awake watching the 2013 Champions Trophy but only for it be a fitting finale.
Somewhat in the entire tournament, one narrative floated the boat. Why the hell is MS Dhoni backing two spinners in England? It was only fitting that Ashwin bowled the final over to two left-handed batters. It was only fitting that a major chunk of that 1.2 billion people who all had opinions against Ashwin were cheering him as he painfully delivered the last ball.
Or be it that time when this guy ruthlessly screwed Australia’s chances of winning a Test series in India, that too just a few hours from where I was studying, at the Chinnaswamy Stadium. You can try, but wiping off memories of Ashwin - good or bad - will be hard for me.
Even when everyone wrote off Ashwin, he found a wall to bounce off, yes, a freaking wall to bounce off, and he did it in the most Ashwin of fashions. Be it against England at Chepauk, where India witnessed crowds for the first time since the pandemic.
Be it against Pakistan at the Melbourne Cricket Ground when an entire country was glued to their screen to see you save your country from shambles. He didn’t even need to hit the ball to get that gazing audience to put up a loud roar.
While growing up, I didn’t see the best of Sachin Tendulkar, but in Ashwin, I have most certainly seen someone who has had quite a similar impact on bowling. Ashwin was, is, and will always be one of India’s finest match-winners.
He leaves a legacy, a void India will struggle to fill.
Maybe Washington Sundar will come and be as good as Ashwin, and maybe there will be someone in the future, but a few players will leave a legacy that can’t quite be matched just by numbers. Ashwin is one of them.
Ashwin is good at telling stories, but most of his stories are always tales of imperfections, and when that tale abruptly concluded, tears rolled down the cheeks of several fans in the country. Even as he walked off from the press conference, he had to say, “I don’t want to make it about me; I wish Rohit had Akash Deep or Jasprit Bumrah with him”.
That’s him. That’s the selfless cricketer that he has always been. He’s always been a fighter, he’s always been a learner, and today, he became one of self-realisation that a career that spanned over well a decade had to come to an end and had to sooner or later.
He might be gone, but his legacy, action, bowling style, and carrom ball will live on forever because, as Ashwin said, he has the street.
If you can tear up Virat Kohli, who are we? Can we please now undo this, Ash?
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