 "R Ashwin: IPL’s early wonder who was programmed to innovate")
Ravichandran Ashwin. The moment someone utters his name, the immediate reaction is to reminisce over what he accomplished in Test cricket . 537 wickets and 3,503 runs across 106 matches puts him in an echelon occupied by very few across the globe, and casts him as a genuine match-winner in the longest format.
What sometimes flies under the radar, though, is how he fared in the Indian Premier League (IPL), and how he remains one of the league’s earliest products to capture the national imagination and stay there. For a very, very long time too. And it all started in that famous yellow donned by the Chennai Super Kings, more than 15 years ago.
He may have not had many chances in the 2009 edition, but the 2010 iteration was where he really made his mark, playing a pivotal role as CSK won the title and then defended it a year later. Those achievements, those titles, those numbers, those wickets – they are, of course, the stuff of legend.
But to truly understand and appreciate Ashwin and his genius, you just had to watch him. Either in the flesh, or when at work because, well, he was just so different, and he just felt so different every time you witnessed him. Almost like a computer or machine that kept evolving after each reboot to ensure the glitzier equipment would not take over entirely.
Ashwin was not overawed by the occasion either. Or by moments that needed seizing, proven by his tendency to operate with the new ball at a time when fast bowlers largely ruled that particular roost.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsBreakthrough in 2010, a leader in 2018
His 2010 IPL season was a breakthrough campaign, but a defining moment probably came a few months later in the now-defunct Champions League T20. In a game against Victoria, he was tasked with bowling the Super Over by MS Dhoni, ahead of Doug Bollinger, who had established himself as the team’s pace spearhead by then.
CSK lost that game and Ashwin was taken apart, but he returned a few days later, shared the new ball and produced a match-winning three-wicket spell. CSK won that tournament, and guess who was crowned the Player of the Series.
That propensity to take responsibility shone through later in his career too, when the Kings XI Punjab (Punjab Kings now) appointed him as captain for the 2018 season, right after a mega-auction. Bowling captains in Indian cricket are rare, with only Anil Kumble (Royal Challengers Bengaluru) and Harbhajan Singh (Mumbai Indians) performing a similar gig for any period of time prior to Ashwin.
But the fact that Ashwin always thought about the game, and thought about it so deeply, meant that that was not a very tough decision, even if the franchise did not quite enjoy the success it had envisioned.
There were a few other IPL moments that Ashwin is also synonymous with. In the 2019 edition, he ran Jos Buttler out for backing up far too much at the non-striker’s end. That dismissal sparked a row, both on how legal and ethical it was, but it was another instance of Ashwin proving he was not afraid to push boundaries and challenge traditional notions.
Ashwin Mankads Buttler
— IndianPremierLeague (@IPL) March 25, 2019
Within the rules of the game? Fair play? Would you have done it? You decide.
Full video here 📹📹https://t.co/OFh1P4mB5W #VIVOIPL pic.twitter.com/kFuayImDo8
Later in 2022, he was the first batter to retire out for tactical reasons. Several IPL teams have used that ploy since and the taboo around retiring a batter out has also evaporated significantly – a change in mindset that might not entirely be down to Ashwin, but one that he seems to have played a major part in.
He was also one of the first Indian spinners to develop a carrom ball, a throwback to Ajantha Mendis and the havoc he wreaked on various oppositions in the late 2000s. And the best part was that he did not stop at that. Every year, there was a different trick up Ashwin’s sleeve. He even tried his hand at a leg-spinning variation , just to ensure his repertoire never turned stale or stagnated.
In Photos | A visual recap of Ravichandran Ashwin's IPL journey
The veteran was not averse to trying out different angles while bowling as well. Some were delivered with a pause. Others were delivered by jumping out wide. Some had a quirky last-minute change to the action to impart over-spin. Others were about under-cutting the ball and using the seam as a pacer would to generate swing. Some worked, some did not. But nothing deterred Ashwin.
Programmed to innovate
There will, of course, still be those who say Ashwin tried too many things. Or that at times, he would have been better served sticking to the basics, and relying on the adage of simplicity being genius. But like how herbivores need a staple diet of plants for sustenance, and like how carnivores need their meat, or how humans require a combination of both and vitamins, Ashwin was from a breed of cricketers who simply needed and were programmed to innovate.
Not to survive. Or to outthink the opposition or improve themselves. But to truly question and query what is indeed possible in this beautiful sport of ours. And how he could, like the newer era and generations that arrive quicker than the next set of waves, be the one to herald a difference.
And he did that better than most. So much so that you begin to wonder if ingenuity was and is his middle name. And he was not afraid to do it. In a league such as the IPL, where even the most minor indiscretions blow up, do the rounds on social media as reels or memes, he was okay to put himself in the firing line – across a variety of circumstances, conditions, landscapes and environments.
All of which was possible only because he believed in himself. And because he believed in this sport’s ability to continually throw up something novel, or to make something that might seem ludicrous on paper, completely actionable and repeatable in reality.
A new challenge on the horizon
It is, thus, a shame that the IPL will no longer be his playground or his lab, and the league, for the departure of such a character, will most definitely be poorer.
But the opportunities Ashwin now seeks elsewhere , and the new challenges that lie ahead, oh, they will have all of that. The intrigue, the ingenuity, the innovation, the incredulity over how someone can, undeterred, keep coming up with something different every single time.
And it will be that way until Ashwin opts to shut down his system definitively, and finally decides to render the ‘update and restart’ prompts moot. Anything else, and the system would feel broken.
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