During the coronavirus-forced lockdown, Ashwin Ravichandran transformed himself into a YouTube star . While international cricket stopped a...
During the coronavirus-forced lockdown, Ashwin Ravichandran transformed himself into a YouTube star. While international cricket stopped and restarted, as the Indian Premier League moved to the UAE, the off-spinner slipped into the role of an interviewer and a storyteller.
He devised his own way of keeping the negativity out by getting Ranji Trophy winners, ace spinners and other cricketers to speak about their success mantras. In these shows, he would explore the mindset of a champion.
And mind you, he is a champion himself.
With 10 wickets in two Tests thus far in Australia, the 34-year-old now has 375 wickets to his name. The only Indians ahead of him in the most Test wickets ladder are Anil Kumble, Kapil Dev and Harbhajan Singh. In any other cricketing nation, he would have been called a legend now.
But in India, Ashwin has struggled to win the battle of perception; the perception that he doesn’t bowl well outside Asia and that his fitness is not up to the mark. There is some truth in both arguments.
There was a time when he was averaging 64.50 outside Asia and that led Virat Kohli to consign him to water boy duties during the first Test of the 2014-’15 series in Australia. But that average now stands at 35.28.
