Talking about the struggles of his career, Ravichandran Ashwin has made an interesting revelation that he was not particularly amused when the former Indian head coach Ravi Shastri said after the 2018-19 Border Gavaskar series that Kuldeep Yadav and not Ashwin was going to be India’s first-choice spinner in overseas test matches going ahead.
According to Ashwin, that statement of Ravi Shastri just completely crushed him. It’s not that he was not happy about the success of Kuldeep, he was ecstatic that a young spinner had taken a 5-wicket haul on his very first tour of Australia, but for him to truly enjoy the success of anyone else, it’s important that he feels he belongs there, and he didn’t have that feeling when that statement was made by the head coach.
Ashwin insisted that he could understand Shastri’s point of view because he was the head coach, and he made a statement to encourage a young spinner which, he thought, was in the best interests of the team and that is why he doesn’t hold it personally against Shastri, but what Shastri said had adverse effects on him.
Never felt backed while going through fitness issues: Ravichandran Ashwin
In an exclusive interview with ESPNcricinfo, Ravichandran Ashwin has opened up about various things and one of them is his fitness as well, which he thinks people have been very insensitive to. Ashwin reckons the Indian cricket community isn’t really very empathetic towards people who have fitness issues and never really tries to understand it from the player’s perspective.
Ashwin revealed that he had fitness issues where his body took a while to warm up and there were occasions where he was gasping for breath after bowling just one over. It had worsened to an extent where retirement crossed his mind several times. Ashwin said the worst part about it all was that he never really felt backed by anyone when he was going through it, while the other people in similar sort of situations is backed.
