From opening batsman to one of the world's best spin bowlers, Ravichandran Ashwin's journey has seen him embrace change at every step
“I believe making mistakes and making them on my own terms is very important,” said Ravichandran Ashwin at a press conference after the second day of the Mohali Test against South Africa in early November this year. He had come back to the side after missing a few games due to a side-strain injury, and just led a masterful spin-bowling offensive from India.
It, then, clearly wasn’t a day when he needed to dwell on his mistakes. With the final wicket of the first innings, the right arm off-break bowler had taken 150 Test wickets in just 29 Tests, the fastest Indian to reach that mark. The milestone came on the back of a stellar year, which included a 21-wicket haul in three Tests in Sri Lanka that ensured a rare series win for India and a Man-of-the-Series award for the 29-year-old from Chennai, who has made his debut in the 2015 Forbes India Celebrity 100 List this year at rank 31.
But his reference to the importance of making mistakes on his own terms wasn’t without cause. The recent resurgence had come after a dip in form in the previous year, following a flurry of mediocre performances in late 2013 and early 2014.
Eager to get out of the slump, Ashwin had experimented with a number of things. Briefly, during the Asia Cup, he had even changed his action and worn long sleeves a la West Indian Sunil Narine. “He was trying too many things and he confused variation with a different style of bowling,” says legendary off-break bowler Erapalli Prasanna, a member of India’s famed spin quartet.
Ashwin, however, believes that all the tinkering was aimed to improve his bowling. And the proof is in the numbers. He is now the highest wicket-taker in Tests in 2015 with 55 wickets in eight matches at an average of 17.81 (as of November 27, 2015—when India beat South Africa in Nagpur to win the third Test in the four-match series). “It’s very difficult to look back and say that this particular thing helped me with my subsequent success,” says Ashwin. “I think it’s the journey that changes things.” And it has been a remarkable one.
The tag of intelligent bowler is often used for Ashwin, and it stems from the fact that a student of spin bowling can tell when he is setting a batsman up, says Prasanna. “There’s no doubt about his capabilities. He shows the intelligent side of a bowler.” And that is the mark of a bowler who works to a plan.
(This story appears in the 25 December, 2015 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)