Following the decison, debates sparked in the cricketing world as the gamble eventually did not pay off for Team India.
Ravichandran Ashwin’s dedication to cricket is unparalleled and immediately after India’s defeat in the World Test Championship final, the 36-year-old wasted no time and boarded the first flight out of London in order to join the Dindigul Dragons for the Tamil Nadu Premier League in Coimbatore.
Despite grappling with jet lag, the off-spinner, renowned for his 474 Test wickets revealed his thought after the WTC Final exclusion in an exclusive interview with Indian Express.
Following the decison, debates sparked in the cricketing world as the gamble eventually did not pay off for Team India. The decision to play an extra pacer in England backfired terrible as the pitch got progressively older and the Indian pacers could not make much of a dent to the opposition batting.
“For me, it’s not a setback. It’s just a stumbling block, I’ll move on because I have gone through that. When somebody knocks you down for the first time, you have a knee-jerk reaction. I think you should be knocked down once in a while along your life so that you are used to it and will know how to bounce back. That’s what life is. Whether you are at your peak or not, it is still a setback. The fact that you need to learn how to deal with it is very important.”
Ravichandran Ashwin also disclosed that he had utilized his time in London to enhance his batting prowess after failing to secure a position in India’s playing XI for the recently concluded ICC World Test Championship (WTC 2023) final against Australia at The Oval.
Narrating a childhood story where he was watching Sachin Tendulkar bat, Ashwin was always intrigued to find ways of improving everytime bowlers leaked runs which eventually motivated him to choose his craft. He also attested that being a bowler requires a ‘rule of horses’ which isn’t there for batters.
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“Can’t I be better than the bowlers that are there currently? This is a very childish way to think but that is how I thought and that is why I started bowling off-spin. This is where it began. However, tomorrow when I hang up my boots, the first thing I will regret is having been such a fine batter, I should have never become a bowler.”
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