Ravichandran Ashwin – The superstar who turned cricket into a battle of 64 squares and 22 pieces

If we take a stroll down the memory lane, one wouldn’t possibly believe that even playing across one format, you can etch your name in the cricketing yore with such an impression that the world will forever deem you a legend. One of those rare names in Indian cricket is that of Ravichandran Ashwin. Despite being a part of all three formats, Ashwin made his name in one of the most gruelling formats of the sport, Test cricket.

India’s list of off-spinners definitely goes long but when it comes to testing the players in the most gruesome of conditions, Ashwin was of a different build. Talking about quality and a necessary harrower of batters with their top-notch off-spin in the Indian threads, the likes of Ghulam Ahmed, Srinivas Venkataraghavan, Harbhajan Singh and Erapalli Prasanna did hefty rounds for sure. Ashwin entered the club of elites with his explosive variations and slowly and steadily kept on climbing the echelons.

Ashwin kept on eclipsing one name after the other and by the time he was done with his onslaught of the willow-wielders, he amassed 537 wickets in the longest format of the sport. An economy of 2.83 across 200 innings and 4541 overs bowled screams class and the Indian legend indeed was emblematic of the word ‘class’.

Out of the 537 wickets claimed by Ash, 383 came in India, underscoring his sweet relationship with the deadbeat rank turners in the sub-continent. However, a glance at the remainder of his scalps would show that he was equally effusive in Australia, clinching 40 wickets from 19 innings while registering best figures of 4/55. Apart from being solid Down Under, his numbers in the remainder of the SENA nations were equally impressive. Ash claimed 34 Test wickets in 15 Test matches in South Africa, New Zealand and England combined.

In a whopping display of classy bowling, Ash registered 37 fifers in the longest format of the game while also going onto turn eight of them in 10 wickets a match. With a bowling average of 24 and a strike rate of 50.7, Ashwin was one of those well-oiled wicket-taking machines for Team India in whites.

The best part about Ravichandran Ashwin wasn’t just his illustrious bowling. He was an equally adept batter and provided a stronghold in the lower-middle order for Team India. With 3503 runs scored at an average of 25.75, Ashwin came in with the crucial flow of runs, stabilizing India’s ship on countless occasions whether that was in the familiar home conditions or a million miles away.

Out of the six centuries scored, four of them came in India while the other two were in the West Indies. Apart from his centuries though, he registered 14 fifties and they were the true telltale signs of him being one of the most proficient batters in the Indian lower-middle order in the longest format of the game. However, despite the numbers being glistening enough, Ashwin’s phenomenal battle alongside Hanuma Vihari in the 2020-21 Sydney Test was truly a humdinger probe of his valiant character. Despite being injured, Ashwin kept his calm and helped India to eke out a thrilling draw.

If one remembers the India-Pakistan clash in Melbourne in the 2022 T20 World Cup, it was definitely Virat Kohli who almost single-handedly got the Men in Blue home but that last boundary popping off Ash’s bat was held in high regards considering the joyous overturn of fortunes after India tasted a defeat against their arch-rivals in the last iteration of the tournament.

Ashwin’s contributions to India will always remain etched in the golden letters. Even though he will continue to play cricket in the domestic and franchise echelons, yet, the international cricketing world will miss the presence of a lodestar who wasn’t just a competitor on the pitch but a brilliant mind that redefined the bounds of cricket.