Ravichandran Ashwin opened up on a range of topics during ESPNcrinfo's latest videocast, talking about his future, the depth of variations available up his sleeves and future of finger-spin amid the game's domination by wrist-spin because of the change in rules, flatter pitches in limited-overs matches.
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"I am good at T20 cricket. If my body holds up, I see a purple patch coming up for me in Test cricket," Ashwin told former India batsman-turned-commentator, Sanjay Manjrekar, when asked about his future.
The premier off-spinner is also against the proposal to mandate four-day Test cricket. "I am a spinner and you're taking the fifth day out of the game, you're taking out a very fascinating aspect of the game," he said.
Ashwin then revealed the secret behind producing so many variations and executing different deliveries with amazing accuracy.
"WV Raman (former India cricketer, current women's team coach), who is known to be a straight forward and extremely disciplined man, trained us to throw the ball accurately that should land above the stumps. He also maintained that I stand no chance as a spinner if I cannot hit the top of the bat of a batsman every time I bowled," said the 33-year-old.
"In fact, WV Raman helped me master my rhythm. He was the first person who, with or without his knowledge, inculcated this self-conscious training inside me."
"He would keep telling me, 'You're running 10% slower' or 'you're running 15% faster'. And this put me in a great place when I started playing first-class cricket," Ashwin added. "These are the things that I will never forget in my career. But because he was straight forward, a bit dismissive and he could put pressure on people, they started moving away from him."
But despite the quality of his skillset and variations, Ashwin has now been out of India's limited-overs set-up for more than two and a half years.
Not one to give up, however, the veteran cricketer has shown impressive performances in IPL during this phase.
"I am really surprised that in the last IPL people (batsmen) could not pick up what I was bowling. They thought I was bowling the carrom ball but actually I was bowling reverse carrom because when I would bowl that, I would get a lot out of the pitch. Sometimes it can spin, sometimes I could get it to skid," he said.
"In T20 cricket, you need to call yourself a bowler. At times you should be able to bowl a bouncer or a spinner. Wrist-spin is successful not because it is challenging both edges of the bat but because of its unpredictable nature when bowling length. And this makes wrist-spin extremely relevant."
"Now imagine if someone can dish out unpredictable stuff in a very aware manner. That's the journey I have taken, and that's why I found myself amongst the wickets and in extreme control last year when I was bowling in Mohali, which can be very challenging," Ashwin added.
"In any white-ball cricket, you can only hunt wickets down unless people are not picking it, but that is at a very novel stage of your career. Post that, you should be able to dish out things at will that can surprise the batsman."
(Inputs from IANS)
