R Ashwin stood at the edge of the corridor outside the press conference room after the rain-affected third Test ended in a draw. Captain Rohit Sharma was walking ahead of him, gesturing to the waiting reporters. “All will be known now, will be found!” (Now everything will be known).
The Indian skipper would say with a laugh, referring to the buzz in the press box and social media about the potential retirement of the “big player”.
After Rohit, Ashwin seemed to calm himself before his big announcement. He took a deep breath, composed himself and entered the press conference room.
Some time ago, Virat Kohli gave him an emotional hug. Ashwin will try his best to keep emotions down as he sits next to Rohit in front of the camera. He was also clever. Then the penny dropped when he said “It’s my last day… I had a lot of fun. I must say I’ve created a lot of memories with Rohit and many of my other teammates, even though I’ve lost some of them over the years. We We are the last group of OGs.” He added that he would not take questions as he was too emotional to handle that load now.
Rohit will talk about how he first became aware of Ashwin’s mental state when he landed in Perth on the third day of the first Test.
On the first day of that Test, just before the lunch break, when the Indian top order was reeling, Ashwin had already hit the indoor net.
Over the next two days, this became a regular occurrence. A couple of times he didn’t even have a support staff, as he kept walking through the net. Thud, thud… Someone heard the sound of their spiked shoes coming down the stairs and into the inner trap.
Then Rohit revealed on Wednesday that he was thinking of retiring. Still, he had a burning desire to work on his craft.
He may be known for his cerebral art but Ashwin is an emotional cricketer. He once revealed to this newspaper how his father’s offhand comments about his ability to speak his mind “ruined him in his career”, sending him back to his room to cry.
Unable to handle the flood of emotions, he will eventually seek medical advice. Lately, he said he’s in a “happy place” and is trying to gather more “memorable” moments instead of stressing too much about the little stuff.
That happy place, or at least some kind of peace, would pop up in Australia now and then. On the fourth day of the match, when Ravindra Jadeja, who replaced him in the Brisbane Test, was about to enter the dressing room through the tunnel, Ashwin patted him on the back from the dugout in the outer space and gave him a healthy smile. On the final morning, Ashwin and Australia’s Nathan Lyon had a long chat away from the pitch. Two famous off-spinners, two men with more than a thousand Test wickets – on 537, Ashwin has four more than Lyon – will be a pretty animated discussion. Ashwin then went to the warm-up area where Jasprit Bumrah patted him on the back.
In Adelaide, where Rohit Sharma had told him to play, he again sweated profusely in the nets. The day before the match at the nets he had a long chat with Gautam Gambhir and then with all the intent and intensity with which he went to bat, he thought he would play the next day.
People who know him closely say that’s how he got information about the recent old Adelaide pitch, and watched highlights of those first-class matches. On the morning of the match, he was seen walking the length of the pitch, pressing the pitch with his fingers. Later in the day, he was seen testing the direction of the wind, letting a blade of grass fly, an act Jasprit Bumrah, another perfectionist, also does on almost every match day.
In that match, Ashwin ran front-on almost single-handedly with a shoulder-length load. This was different from his other approach of taking it forward or up, and using the wind to keep the ball to left-handers and away from right-handed batsmen.
He took the wicket of Mitch Marsh in one such ball. A sign of a bowler unsure of what to do with a pitch that doesn’t respond to spin and how to use the wind instead of doing its job.
A few days before the Brisbane Test, his last day in the outdoor nets, he bowled little and did not bat. Gambhir met for a long chat, and Ashwin stepped up to bat. Gambhir gave him a throw down, and the bowling coach, former South African fast bowler Morne Morkel, hit a number of balls from 17 yards to Ashwin’s chest and face. Ashwin hoped to upset them, his last cricket activity as an Indian player.
As he walked out of the media room after announcing his retirement, Rohit was asked why the decision was taken in the middle of the series and he said something empty about how Ashwin’s decision should be respected.
That may be, but there are still two Tests to go, and especially when the final match is in Sydney where conditions can sometimes allow two spinners or at least provide an opportunity for the best spinner in the team to play, this is one. Strange decision.
Especially when the best spinner in the Indian team, not just by reputation but how all three of them have bowled in these three Test matches, is R Ashwin. His inability to convince her to reconsider her decisions and management makes the entire episode seem odd.
On the final day of the Brisbane Test, shortly after noon, Yashasvi Jaiswal stood outside the dugout with the ball, imitating Ashwin’s bowling action as India tried to avoid the follow-on.
Ashwin smiled, asked for the ball, and went about his bowling action without releasing the ball. For a long time, his eyes were glued to the action in the middle, but the right-hander, who won numerous matches for India, was ripping fantastic off breaks.
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