My Gully cricket impressed Kohli, Dravid and helped India beat Pakistan: Ashwin

Ravichandran Ashwin, who hit the last ball for a single against Mohammad Nawaz in the India vs Pakistan T20 World Cup 2022 match at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, also left a ball just before that and it was called a wide. 

Before the wide ball, India needed two to win from the last ball and Ashwin had just walked in. To leave the first ball outside the leg when one needs to hit the winning runs must be some ultra-cool mentality. 

Answering what he thought before taking that call to leave the ball, Ashwin said that the gully cricketer in him was the one who decided to leave it. 

“Leaving a ball on the leg side is a crucial factor for us to get a free hit because all our games they offside runs right so it is really about bowling underarm into your legs so that you can't score runs. 

"The moment you bowled a ball it's very natural for me to just flick open my hip and leave that ball and I didn't think about it,” Ashwin explained during his interaction with former English cricketers turned commentators Nasser Hussain and Michael Atherton in Sky Sports Podcast. 

“Most people would say you spent midnight oil on that to be able to leave that ball which is not the case,” he added.

Ashwin further added that he hadn’t realised the importance of his knock until he went into the dressing room and got a lot of plaudits from then-India coach Rahul Dravid. 

“I hadn't realized what I had done. I came back into the dressing room and I haven't seen Rahul Dravid exalt like. 

"I mean the second time I saw him exalt was after the World Cup we won recently and until then I hadn't seen him exalt and he came to me and said, 'That's why we had you in the squad that's the way you deal with pressure.'

"I'm like okay I didn't quite realize the magnitude of what it meant to people but honestly, that moment I just saw the ball let it go and then.”

The former India spinner, who represented the country in 65 T20Is, said that Virat Kohli at the other end too was surprised by his decision to leave the ball. 

“I think Virat was like what was almost celebrating and he just used his hand to say, ‘Who the hell leaves the ball like?’.”