PHOTO FEATURE
Follow UsEverything ends.
Me, you, this device I’m typing these words on, Sachin Tendulkar’s career, James Anderson’s career, and now, Ravichandran Ashwin’s international cricket career also arrives at a close.
However, what matters and defines a thing or a person’s importance and legacy is the intensity of our yearning for them.
Very few cricketers in this great game of ours can claim to have left the game at such high altitudes that the only place to go from there for someone now is higher. Even fewer amongst them enriched their craft further from the level they found it at when they held a cricket ball or bat for the first time.
Ashwin is a rare breed of Homo sapiens who did both. While he established new standards of spin bowling in India, his impact on the craft of off-spin was tremendous. That’s why whichever social media platform you go at, everyone seems to yearn about various instances from Ashwin’s career that documented themselves. We’ll do the same here, but through pictures.
> When the red ball king was a white ball maverick
The 2011 World Cup is remembered for many things. But Ashwin’s spell to Shane Watson in the quarterfinal when he was just 23 is a masterclass in defensive spin bowling that has remained dormant in Indian cricket’s nostalgia train.
He bowled with the new ball and cleaned up Watson on the last ball of the 10th over after pestering him with flatter trajectory deliveries which he couldn’t get under. Ashwin got two wickets in the game, and India defeated Australia by five wickets to reach the tournament's semifinal which they eventually won.
> A disastrous debut
Ashwin’s debut Test series in home conditions against England was anything but memorable. But once you look at the image of him standing stunned as Alastair Cook is leaping in the air after beating Indian in India, you realise this is where the journey began for him — at the bottom, where he was questioned and had to fight stereotypes at every step of his career.
This debut series was no different, where he averaged 52.64 with the ball.
> The face of sweet redemption
Australia in India, 2012/13
Ashwin - Eight innings, 29 wickets, 20.10 average, Four five-wicket hauls, One 10-wicket haul
And thus began an era of domination in Test cricket for India at home, where Ashwin was the dictator.
> Champion of the Champions Trophy
When Harsha Bhogle took the mic after India won the rain-curtailed final of the 2013 Champions Trophy and said, “Tredwell misses, Dhoni misses, but it doesn’t matter,” he was wrong.
It mattered so much that even 11 years later, we remember when Ashwin bowled four overs, had one maiden, conceded just 15 runs, and took two wickets to hand India the trophy.
Before becoming a red-ball giant, Ashwin was a stone-cold white ball match-winner for India.
> Ashwin, the batter’s love affair with the West Indies
Ashwin started his career as an opening batter. The time was ripe that he showed those skills in the longest format. It was Sachin Tendulkar’s last series. What better way to pay tribute to him than scoring a hundred?
> When Ashwin announced his greatness
South Africa in India, 2015-16
The face you make when you finally beat the Proteas after Hashim Amla and AB de Villiers bat for 541 balls combined.
> The Ashwin Gambit in Bengaluru
India were down and out after losing the first Test in Pune during the 2017 Border Gavaskar Trophy
Ashwin took 6/41 as India made a resounding comeback in Bengaluru and won the second Test by 75 runs. It was almost inevitable at this point that Ashwin will save India’s arse at home. He didn’t disappoint here. He collected 21 wickets at an average of 27.38 in the series.
> The white ball era reaches a close
Ashwin never made a full-fledged comeback to the Indian white-ball sides as its regular member after the loss in the 2017 Champions Trophy final. He did make his white ball comeback later for a brief period, but the Ashwin-Jadeja white ball era ended abruptly here, and Ashwin went through one of the toughest phases in his career.
> The carrom king
It’s a weapon Ashwin used very sparsely, but it was almost always lethal. The way he flicked it from his front pacing palm, the way it drifted into the right hander, and the way it turned away from him would always remain etched in my memory. It was a three-part act of solid wizardry, where the batters mostly had no answers to it.
> Truly, a DREAM
When Ashwin hit his first-ever Test hundred at Chepauk in the second Test of the 2021 England tour of India, there couldn’t have been a better background for him to get captured.
> The steel of Sydney
Both shared one chest guard as Ashwin batted with a dysfunctional back, and Hanuma Vihari with a torn hamstring to pull off one of the greatest rear guard actions in Indian Test cricket history!
Gabba’s greatness was built on the steel shown in Sydney.
> Mount 500 climbed in Dharamshala
Ashwin chose the most picturesque spot in Indian cricket to register his 500th Test wicket during the England tour of India in 2024. For his 100th Test, he also received a guard of honour from his team and the mighty Himalayas in the background.
> c Rahane b Ashwin
“Standing at the slips was never a dull moment with you bowling. Ever ball felt like a chance waiting to happen” - Ajinkya Rahane’s tweet after Ashwin’s retirement
While the older generation had “c Dravid b Kumble”, we had our “c Rahane b Ashwin.”
> The most legendary leave in Indian T20I history
What do you do when two runs are needed on one ball and the bowler bowls a delivery that will probably graze past your thighs?
Most would play it.
But Ashwin just stayed out of the line of the ball that was going down leg, and left it to be a wide. The next ball, he hit a single over mid-off, and India won the game.
While Virat Kohli turned a god in human clothing that day, Ashwin was like a roadside maverick, too cool for pressure in front of a hundred thousand Homo sapiens shouting.
> The beginning of the end?
Remember the average of 50+ from Ashwin’s debut series after which he never went that down and India created a Test legacy unheard of in the next 12 years?
When India’s Test series winning streak at home was finally broken, Ashwin averaged 41.22 with the ball.
He never played a Test in India again.
> Ahh, the wretched day when it all ended
Everything has to end. Ashwin’s career did too. But does it has to be sad? Does the yearning for the conscientious spin scientist has to be full of melancholy?
Of course no.
Ashwin was like a bright pink tree in an evergreen forest full of off-spinners - the disciplined hippie in a train of well-trained army men.
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