INTERVIEW
Follow UsNot many cricketing coaches could walk away with the distinction of knowing Ravichandran Ashwin as intricately as Woorkeri Raman. Raman wasn’t just his first head coach at Tamil Nadu, but he was more than that: a mentor, a guide and, more importantly, someone with whom he talked cricket for endless hours.
Ashwin's ability to talk endless cricket and seek new pastures has stood the test of time. It is only fair that when Ashwin decided to hang up his boots, Raman was shocked but nevertheless ready to walk down memory lane with Cricket.com.
Starting from the first memory that the duo shared to what seperated Ashwin from all the other cricketers he has seen from close quarters during his time as Tamil Nadu’s head coach. Here’s the full interview.
Could you just trace us through your first memory of Ravichandran Ashwin? What made him stand out from the others?
Ashwin is not the sort of guy who would perhaps make you notice immediately. It's just that when you start seeing him on a few occasions and then start talking to him, you'll suddenly realise that this boy is different.
His insatiable curiosity made him stand apart from the rest. He would also pose his questions freely without worrying about too many things, whether appropriate, at the right time, or a bit tiresome to the other person. So he would not be fazed by those thoughts. He'd ask what he wanted to ask.
What were your discussions usually like around that time? Was it more argumentative or more of an acceptance from Ashwin?
There was never a situation where he was arguing. It was a case of him wanting to exchange thoughts rather than arguing and wasn’t limited to any particular time.
Ashwin prefers to get rid of whatever is going through his head then and there. He won't look for time or allocate time to have conversations. He'll talk about something whenever he thinks he needs to.
As a head coach, did you ever try to influence Ashwin’s game, be it his load-up or his bowling style?
No, the idea was to try and make himself discover what he could do, what best suits him, because there's no point in restraining somebody to a particular way of doing things. I always believe that if everyone is the same, the world will be a boring place. It was just a case of allowing himself to find out what he wanted to do.
In his face, he also had a little bit of a disadvantage - he wasn’t extraordinarily gifted in coordination. His movements weren’t too fluid, so it was more important for him to discover what he could do and how to convert that disadvantage into an advantage.
In terms of your relationship with him, how would you best describe it? As a head coach and a player or a mentor?
It would rather be more of two cricketers talking to each other, exchanging their thoughts and having nice, engaging conversations without any inhibitions. He also struck me as somebody like [Erapalli] Prasanna or [Srinivas] Venkatraghavan in that they would talk a lot about cricket and exchange information.
Both were very cerebral in playing cricket and doing other things in life. So, he struck me as one of those characters, one of those off-spinners who needed to talk about many things. The other common ground was that he was also an engineer, apart from being an off-spinner like them. You needed to measure up to Ashwin in a certain way, otherwise the conversations would finish quickly.
Some people genuinely thought he was argumentative. Some people felt in a lighter vein that it was difficult to have the final say with him. But I wouldn't put him down as argumentative or I wouldn't put him down as one who always wants to have the last say. His basic objective was always about one, to talk and two, to talk cricket.
Any tale that best describes Ashwin’s nature?
It is interesting how I spotted Prasanna at one of the matches in Bangalore when Ashwin was just coming into the first-class cricket circuit. I spoke to Prasanna and told him, "I need you to have a chat with this young boy who is coming to the side." And then I had to tell him, "You pipe down to the 8th standard student level."
You don't talk like a guy with a master's degree like you do. You must pipe down and set your base very low while talking. Otherwise, it will be a disaster because it's easy for a man of Prasanna's experience to assume that Ashwin knows many things. Ashwin was just into his first or second season.
I know Prasanna, how he talks, and how you like to have conversations. So, I had to prevail upon Prasanna to pipe down a bit when he conversed with Ashwin. And lo and behold, they had a conversation, which went on for about one and a half hours. And neither of them had anything unpleasant to say about the conversation, which made me feel that that went off very well.
