Ace India spinner R Ashwin was named the joint Player of the Series along with Ravindra Jadeja as India earned a 2-1 series win over Australia in the 2023 Border-Gavaskar Trophy recently. Ashwin picked 25 wickets in the four Tests, while Jadeja took 22.
The fourth and final Test of the series in Ahmedabad ended in a draw and with New Zealand defeating Sri Lanka in the Christchurch Test, India secured a berth in the final of the World Test Championship, where they will face Australia in the Oval from June 7.
The off-spinner took six wickets in the first innings of the Ahmedabad Test, earning laurels for producing an impressive outing on a significantly batting-friendly surface.
On his YouTube channel, Ashwin shared his thoughts on the recent Border-Gavaskar Trophy triumph. Though he expressed delight at winning the series, Ashwin also spoke about the criticism he received from fans over a previous video posted on his channel.
He said that the fans blamed him for India’s loss in the third Test in Indore because in a previous video, Ashwin had talked about ‘how to play against spin in India’.
“Let me get to the fun part now. I did a review video of the Delhi Test. Our admin gave a thumbnail for that video: How to bat against spin in India. After seeing that thumbnail, I thought to myself how will I tell how to play against spin? But there was a couple of points that I did mention in that video. That you should trust your defense while playing spin. ‘Follow your process, trust your defence’. All these are basic things,” Ashwin started narrating the story.
“But the beauty here is that once we lost in Indore, everyone started commenting on that video. ‘Since you taught them how to play against spin in India, we lost the Indore Test. You were the reason for our own downfall’. These were some of the comments. I found it really funny.
We have Rahul Dravid who has played for so many years and did his coaching in NCA before coming here. Likewise with Andrew McDonald for the Australian team. The narrative changed completely as if the Australians saw one YouTube video and learned how to play spin. I found it very funny and also was very proud of myself. I was like how good I should have been that I coached an entire cricket team in a single video and made them win a Test match. I was feeling very happy and proud,” Ashwin added.
Ashwin revealed the video title was changed the very next day after the loss by the administrator of his page.
"But the very next day, the admin changed the heading to Delhi Test review due to intense pressure in the comments section. I asked him, ‘You changed the heading, okay. But do you really think they saw our video and learned how to play spin? Especially, after watching our Tamil video?’ Of course, we did have subtitles for them to understand. And moreover, what did I tell in that video for them to learn how to play spin?
Of course, I did mention two points. But they won because of that or what? If yes, then look at the reach of our channel." I gave a light moment to him saying why should any teams have a coach from here on since they can just watch our video and win matches. Because at the end of the day, we live in the world of social media. All these things spread like a wildfire," said Ashwin.
While India will now play three ODIs against Australia as well, R Ashwin will be preparing for the upcoming IPL 2023 where he will play for Rajasthan Royals.
(Hindustan Times inputs)
