India cricketer R Ashwin was not fully fit to take the field on day five of the third Test against Australia. His wife Prithi Ashwin revealed in a column that the off-spinner was crawling on the floor with back pain and he couldn't even bend down.
Ashwin still went on to play a match-saving knock on the fifth-day track at SCG. He scored unbeaten 39 runs and survived 128 balls to ensure a draw for India.
In a column for The Indian Express, Prithi wrote, "It had been a tense morning. Over the years, I have seen him handle pain and know he has a high threshold for it, but I had never seen him like this. He was crawling on the floor. He couldn’t get up or bend down. I couldn’t imagine how he was going to play and the snack-break comment was said only in half-jest. As he was about to leave, he said, 'I have to play. I have to get this done'.
"The first signs of trouble had come the earlier evening, at the end of the fourth day’s play. I had seen him on television in some sort of pain a couple of times. When he walks into the room, he usually has just a few minutes before he rushes to the physio or masseur table and then meetings. if any, and comes back late. 'Are you fine, physically?' I asked him and he shot back, 'Didn’t you see me bowl?!' and said he felt he had a tweak in the back that was beginning to hurt. He felt during warm-ups that morning that he stepped awkwardly and did something to his back."
Ashwin, who walked in to bat after Cheteshwar Pujara's dismissal, stayed in the middle for around 43 overs with his batting partner Hanuma Vihari. Vihari was also struggling with a hamstring injury but continued to bat.
The India off-spinner had reportedly complained of pain in his back the day earlier during Australia's second innings. Ashwin bowled 25 overs in the second innings and picked up 2 wickets. The pain gradually started to take a toll on him and he had to go to the physio.
"It had slowly begun to act up as the day progressed. He went to the physio. Ashwin was wracking in pain, and I knew other players too were injured. The match was still alive, and I was wondering how these guys were going to do it. As family members, our emotions are wired differently – we see them at close quarters, pain and emotion and the abnormal desire to compete and win is something I have tried to get used to, but I don’t think I will ever be able to understand it completely," Prithi added.
"I could see Ashwin standing in the dressing room corridor or pacing up and down on television. I knew it must be because he feared if he sat down, he couldn’t get up. That racked up my worries a bit. When Ashwin was walking out to bat in pain, I was thinking ‘How these guys do what they do, only they know’.
"I would never forget the surreal moment when Ashwin walked into the room that evening. We laughed, we cried, we laughed. We didn’t know how to react. And we howled. It wasn’t an euphoric cry – that was after the Melbourne win in the second Test. That had a different feel. I had rarely seen him that light, that bouncy, that delirious."
(Inputs from The Indian Express)
