"Should have bowled the carrom ball," R Ashwin recalls the super-over where he let MS Dhoni down

Dhoni had trusted Ashwin to come good with the ball, but he conceded 23 runs.

Former Chennai Super Kings (CSK) spinner R Ashwin, who currently plays for Delhi Capitals (DC), used to be MS Dhoni's go-to bowler after winning his trust. But there was an occasion when he let his captain down in super over.

It was a match between CSK and Victoria Bushrangers in Champions League T20 when they managed to tie a nearly lost match.

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Dhoni handed over the responsibility to Ashwin in the tie-breaker over, but he ended up conceding not 10 or 15, but 23 runs.

“We were playing in South Africa against the Victoria Bushrangers. The game ended in a Super Over. I think I ended up with a wicket, I can’t recall. I think Raina bowled the last over and got us into a Super Over. We were standing in a huddle, Fleming just ran, there was a quick meet up. As they were all talking, I just put my hand up and said I want to bowl the Super Over. There was Doug Bollinger, there was Murali, but nobody volunteered for that. For me it felt like an opportunity to win a game for the team,” Ashwin told Harsha Bhogle on Cricbuzz.

Ashwin, a youngster back then, wasn't expecting Dhoni to give him the ball. “He didn’t even think, gave the ball to me and went off. Thinking of it as a captain today, for a captain to do something like that to a youngster, I think I came into MS Dhoni’s peripheral in 2009 where he played a Challenger Trophy I got him out and I celebrated like a crazy young kid. I don’t know how it went down with him. I caught him once in the tournament and dismissed him in the final,” he said.

The off-spinner failed badly in the super over and the result came against CSK. “I bowled that over, I succumbed to pressure, David Hussey hit me for a six and then I started chasing the over, I started bowling quicker and quicker. I bowled the yorkers and didn’t execute them. Now if I think back, I just tell myself – what the hell have you done? You wanted to bowl a Super Over, the man gave you a Super Over, CSK is a team that you wanted to be a part of, you wanted to be a performer and you have pushed your team out of the tournament now.”

Dhoni doesn't like to say much but he was disappointed with Ashwin for not bowling carrom ball. “You didn’t bowl the carom ball, you should have bowled it, you should have bowled it.”, he said.