This wasn’t how it was supposed to end, was it?
Ravichandran Ashwin, sitting in the visitors changing room at the Gabba, with a neon substitute player bib over his Test whites, looking on glumly as persistent rain forced a damp draw in the third match of the Border Gavaskar Trophy, contemplating what words he would speak to the journalists covering this match not long after the result when informing them that he was retiring from international cricket with immediate effect.
Ashwin, 38, India’s second-highest Test wicket-taker with 537 at an average of 24 each, and the game’s seventh most successful bowler of all time, made the surprise decision to walk away midway through a Test series in Australia, with his skipper Rohit Sharma announcing that his team-mate would fly back to Chennai the very next day. It was that sudden, and that cold.
Rohit, seated next to Ashwin inside the Gabba, informed the gathered media that he had been informed of Ashwin’s decision when he linked up with the squad during the Perth Test, and that he had to convince him to play one Test. That would be the day-night match in Adelaide, which India lost inside three days, and from which Ashwin claimed 1/53 with his offspin.
Speculation is, of course, rife as to what prompted Ashwin to retire with two Test matches to play in the BGT, a famous and fiercely competitive series in which his contribution since 2011 was 260 wickets from 23 Tests. He will turn 39 next September, which is when the Indian cricket team next plays a Test series at home. After the Melbourne and Sydney matches, India are not scheduled to play Test cricket until next July when they face hosts England for five matches.
If Ashwin, having watched his Tamil Nadu state mate Washington Sundar make a sudden appearance during the recent New Zealand series and out-bowl him with 16 wickets at 12 apiece as compared to nine at 41, and then get the nod ahead of both him and Ravindra Jadeja in Perth, got the sense that he was not a priority overseas, then his decision is understandable.
He has been overlooked for six consecutive Tests in England, and perhaps got the signal from he would again be overlooked for another spin-bowling allrounder next summer. Maybe he expected to play more than the Adelaide Test during this tour of Australia. Maybe it was communicated to him that he would not get more than one match.
It is all conjecture, and time will tell – keep an eye out for part two of his utterly absorbing autobiography – what really transpired over the past few weeks in Australia.
For now, let us appreciate the genius and impact of Ashwin, a match-winner unparalleled in home conditions who won a joint-level 11 Player-of-the-Series awards alongside Sri Lankan great Muttiah Muralitharan. A cricketer who with his canny variety of offspin was a central figure in India’s rise to the top of the ICC rankings and whose imprint on 12 years without a home Test series loss was indelible. And not to forget, an allrounder with over 3500 runs in Tests with six centuries.
Ashwin is in many ways an obsessive cricketer; constantly focused on the sport and always eager to learn and improve. When he has not been playing cricket, Ashwin has been watching it, be it internationals or some random T20 league. During the Covid19 years, he took to YouTube to share his knowledge and enthusiasm of the sport and interviewed a range of people, from team-mates and contemporaries to coaches and analysts and even subscribers. This endeared one to the man, while also affirming a post-retirement career for the affable Ashwin.
As a feisty cricketer, resting on accolades is not his thing. Since he debuted in Test cricket with nine wickets against West Indies in 2011 – he was named Player of the Series for scalping 22 wickets – Ashwin went on to constantly reinvent himself as a spinner, at times to his own detriment, although fleetingly it must be emphasized. From traditional offbreaks, he honed his brand of the carrom ball, christened the sodukko ball in a nod to his years playing tennis ball cricket in Chennai, and there were flirtations with legbreaks and googlies. The passion, commitment, and drive to enhance his skill was remarkable.
Tellingly, there was no visiting team to India that did not struggle against him. Turning track or featherbed, Ashwin remained a threat. From the second half of 2019, when the World Test Championship came into existence, teams began valuing victories more owing to the new points system, and thus more result-oriented pitches were rolled out. Since the WTC began, Ashwin at home claimed 149 wickets from 27 Tests at 19.82 apiece. Prior to the WTC, his home record was 234 wickets at 22.68 each.
When he was good, Ashwin was bloody good. A genius. Unplayable, planting seeds of doubt in visiting batsmen’s minds that they might not have imagined were possible. And Ashwin was never bad. He was, on his worst day, erratic in line and length and very cranky, throwing up his long arms in exasperation. But bad? Nope.
His overseas record in SENA countries leaves room for criticism, but he had his moments in Australia where he was part of two series-winning Indian teams, and 40 wickets from 11 Tests there is not the worst of numbers.
To see him watching the rain fall in Brisbane, all sorts of thoughts probably spinning through his head as if he was bowling at the MA Chidambaram Stadium on a sticky March afternoon, was a strange feeling. One did not expect the end to come like this, and Ashwin walking away from his team halfway through a Test series in Australia does not sit right. You don’t jump ship, even if your shipmates don’t value you like you believe they should. Perhaps a home farewell was too illogical to expect, but Ashwin flying back from Brisbane a day after a potentially series-shifting draw at the Gabba feels strange.
There is no filling the massive void left by Ashwin’s retirement, and to this writer’s mind he will remain the last bowler in Tests to get to 500 wickets. A modern-day great, we should all be thankful we had the chance to watch him go about his job in Test cricket for the better part of 13 years.
