The spectacle of cricket comprises three major entities – the cricketer, who plays the game, the die-hard cricket lover, who devotes his time and emotions in following the game, and the cricket expert, who analyses the game to its minutest detail. Bundle all these three entities into one and you will get Ravichandran Ashwin. For this man, cricket is not only a means to make a living; it’s a way of life. Most sportsmen prefer to confine the conversations about their game to the field of play and the dressing room, in a bid to ‘switch off’. Ashwin doesn’t endeavour that. In fact, his idea of relaxing after a long, hard day on the cricket field is to talk about every event that occurred on the day. When Ashwin says, “I don’t believe there is anyone in this world who loves this game more than I do”, you know he means it. His mind and heart are engaged in cricket in equal measure. Even as he talks discerningly about the technicalities of a spinner’s action, he insists that spin bowling is pure art. Here are the excerpts from India’s ace off-spinner’s perspicacious and passionate conversation with BCCI.TV I spoke to you when you took your 100th Test wicket, in Mumbai. You said then that you were exactly where you had planned to be at that point of your career. How do you see things now in terms of your new goals? I think I have just reached a stage in life where I am really aware of what I am doing. I am conscious about where I am releasing the ball and what I am doing with respect to my bowling and batting. I am getting into a really good phase. I believe that my best years as a cricketer will start from here and this is the point where my career will start blossoming. In the last year I haven’t played as many Test matches as I’d have liked to but still I am in a very positive frame of mind. As a variety of bowling, spin gets compromised here and there in getting the right combination and with varying conditions. For me cricket is a team sport and I know that I will have to give in to these factors, and I am happy to do it. Sometimes, you don’t get enough opportunities to showcase the positivity you’re feeling about your game. I am just waiting for them to come. In England you spoke about the work you’ve done on your action. You said you have minimized the difference in your Test and ODI actions and try to be more side-on now. Could you explain the process? It’s not like I have suddenly gotten more side-on and made the change abruptly. I have been working on it since I started to play international cricket. I have played around with the angle of my action throughout my career and so, it is not something totally new. When you’re trying to get into different positions in your action, it’s about stability and how repeatable the action is. These are the things that get compromised when it comes to positioning of your body at the crease. Your strength and core stability matters a lot at the crease. The strength of the core is as important for a spinner as it is for a fast bowler because you’ve got to transfer your weight towards the batsman’s direction. If you ask me whether it is difficult to change that position, I would say it isn’t. That doesn’t mean I can turn up tomorrow and do it but because everything can be worked out, adjusted, practised and put into place. What’s important is the willingness to accept change, practice and conviction. Is this change in action permanent or situation-based? To me, everything and anything in this game is always varying. As a modern day cricketer, the willingness to adapt is very essential, even if it takes some time to get there. I welcome change and I want myself to be a very adaptable cricketer. Tomorrow if I wake up and realize that I need to change something about my game, and I am convinced about it, I will do it. People’s judgment will depend on how successful or unsuccessful that change proves to be, but that doesn’t bother me because I play this game because I love it. How difficult is it for an off-spinner to bowl the doosra or the carom ball with a side-on action? To bowl a doosra, you have to be more open-chested. And an open-chested action brings along all the other shortcomings. There have been many open-chested off-spinners in the past. I used to be a semi-open bowler when I started but then I learned to be more side-on. There are certain complexities when it comes to a bowler’s action and there is no one general rule that applies. But it is nearly impossible to bowl a doosra with a side-on action. The carom ball is very different in that regards because it is all about how you flick your finger at the time of release. Here, the action doesn’t matter but the release point does. There are a lot of adaptations of the carom ball. You can get your arm a little side-on, try to get it a little hyper-extended or you can change the angle by keeping your chest open. On different wickets different things might work. You will have to put yourself in all scenarios in a bid to determine the best method for a particular pitch. At home you have been India’s main wicket-taking bowler. How difficult is it to alter your mindset as your role changes in foreign conditions? Personally, since the time I played grade cricket, through to the transformation I made from being a batsman who can bowl to a bowler who can bat, I have always wanted to occupy the top spot. I’ve always wanted to be the go-to man and there’s no hiding behind the fact that everybody wants to do it. When I go to a game in the morning, I want to come back at night having excelled in the game. So, for me, accepting that I will not be the go-to man in certain conditions is really hard, but I am trying to accept it. If that is how the team can best utilize my skills, so be it. In that case I try to find other ways in which I can contribute. I love batting when I get a chance. I am trying really hard at the first slip even though it’s not easy to bowl and then stand in the slip cordon. So, I am trying to find other avenues in the game wherein I can be the game changer. I try to be as realistic as possible with regards to my role in the team but that doesn’t stop me from believing that I can pick up five wickets on the first day of the Test match in Brisbane. I will still plan, based on the batsmen, the pitch and the conditions. I firmly believe that if you’re honest in your work ethic and disciplined in your execution, the game will reward you. We talk a lot about how batsmen need to adjust to different conditions. How difficult is it for a spinner? I don’t buy into the notion that you have to go to a place two-three times before you can succeed there. Even if you put me on a new planet, I am firmly going to believe that I can pick wickets. That mindset is in my DNA and it will not change. It all boils down to how open you are to absorb everything around you. My main aim is to spin the ball and pick wickets. When I was doing my first-class yards, my coach, WV Raman, told me that there is no point in challenging the conditions. He kept on saying that but I would never listen. I have only just started to see his point that you don’t drive past a wall. If you are faced with certain conditions, respect them and just land the ball where the conditions demand. Every spinner has that perfect pace at which he can extract the maximum out of the wicket. How do you determine yours? Perfect pace does not only depend on the wicket. For me the perfect pace is at which I can put the batsman in two minds whether to come forward or go on the backfoot. For an Indian spinner touring abroad, I think you’ve got to start at a slightly quicker pace and then discover the ideal pace based on the batsman. If you’re bowling to the tail, it’s better to be slower through the air so you can get them to prod and play lofted shots. A top-order batsman will generally use his feet to get under the ball. So, the ideal pace is the one which beats the batsman. Are you an over-thinker? It is something that people can tag you with and I don’t think I am an over-thinker. There is a fair amount of sensible thinking that is there. When your sensible thinking is beaten by someone else, it becomes over-thinking on your part. The whole idea of playing this game is to try and out-smart the other set of 11 people. I never have to tell myself to control what I am thinking because it is probably my strongest asset. Someone else might achieve success using brute force but for me it’s all about trying to analyse the game, and I do it a way that works for me. There is no boundary to determine what amount of thinking is right and when it becomes over-thinking. Perfect thinking is just that tipping point where everything works. When you’re bowling well, everything you try comes off – all the variations and innovations. But when you don’t have that rhythm, is that when you have to really force your mind to just aim for the top of the off-stump and forget everything else? When you’re in rhythm, it all comes out as a poem. But when a bowler is not in rhythm, he tries to find it. In that bid there are a lot of things that can go wrong. You hurry up to the crease, you finish a little faster or later, you try to spin the ball harder and it comes out a touch late, or you toss it up a bit more – all these things happen. That’s why it is very, very important in a modern cricketer’s career that he has a good, strong support staff around him, people who know you inside out. It is a highly paid game and the support staff too are highly paid. Their job is to understand the players and offer suggestions accordingly. It’s not always technical – most people tell you that you’re going wide off the crease or your leg is angled too far across or you’re not finishing. These are all common facets that people sitting anywhere in the stadium will be able to pick. Often, people look for a big solution when the problem is actually very small. It could be as small as which foot you’re starting your run-up from or how you’re loading your wrist lock. These are the smallest things that matter and most of the times they are ignored. Has the appointment of Mr. Bharat Arun (India’s new bowling coach) helped you in that regards? My respect for the game is immense. So, what happens is, whenever I am done with a game, I like to analyse the whole game inside out. And it’s not only my contribution for the day – it could start with a small incident in the morning when we put a fielder slightly wider when he could have been finer. By analyzing these small things I try to understand the game better as a whole. I try to see where we made a mistake so that I can put those lessons in use to my own preparation for the next game. When I do this, it is very understandable that people could misconstrue me. This could come under the boil of over-thinking and over-analysing. But this is how I found success. In this aspect, Bharat Arun really understands me. I share my goals as a cricketer with every member of the coaching staff because a player and coach need to work in unison. Some understand and some don’t. Sometimes, I come across as a very straight speaker, which doesn’t go down well with some people, and that is fine. But I put my thoughts across so that we work well as a team. The same is with Ravi Shastri. The first thing I told him is, ‘I want to do this – analyse the game at the end of day’s play – because it is an important feature in my cricket.’ He said that it was fabulous. So, after every match of the Sri Lanka ODI series, I’d have a chat with Ravi about how exactly my bowling went and where we could get better on the field. That is a real heartening factor for me – to have these two men around to discuss things that I want to discuss. We even talk about aspects like the other bowlers’ release and where their length and line went wrong. These are the things that people can put under the over-thinking header. They would wonder why I need to think about another cricketer. But from my aspect, if I can find a loophole in someone else’s game, I can not only go and tell him, which will benefit him, but it is also a lesson for me for life. I discuss every small thing about every spell. I have an outstanding memory which flummoxes people. I know exactly what happened off the fourth ball of the second over of my third spell. I like to go and talk to someone to see if he spotted something that I felt as well. These discussions give me immense amount of comfort and a base to perform. Given how minutely you view the game, do you often have a lot of constructive suggestions for the captain? A year after I made my first-class debut, I became the captain of my state side (Tamil Nadu). I was 20 then and was really rough. All I did was analyse the game inside out and go with my instincts, putting men where I felt it was right. What helped me was having a coach like Raman, who told me the right things. He said some bitter things which I didn’t like but I didn’t mind him telling me because speaking up front is exactly my way of dealing with things. I am a bit ruthless in that if I feel I am right about something, I will go and tell the person, but if he doesn’t take it, I won’t mind. However, with MS (Dhoni) I share a different kind of rapport. When I am bowling, he knows exactly what I want and I put the field in place. It is a wonderful rapport with a lot of understanding. I have a lot of suggestions but there is a certain pattern in which different teams and individuals operate. You have to understand that certain kinds of fields will not suit certain bowlers and captains. Here is where I draw a boundary saying, this is a pattern in which he likes to play and the one which the bowlers are comfortable with. Field placements and strategies are not designed on the basis of a match. They are designed based on how a team works. So, actually trying to contribute on the field in these matters is not as easy as it seems. But when it comes to moving small angles, I do go and put forward my views. I would wait for the right moment – it could be at the fall of a wicket, in the midst of a long spell or an uncomfortable situation where we are leaking runs – to chip in with my suggestions. But again, if the captain doesn’t agree with me, I would just go and contribute in my own way with my game. Most international teams have specialist batting, fast bowling and fielding coaches. But there are hardly any specialist spin coaches in a support staff. Sometimes, do you feel like you’re on your own? Over the years I have made lovely friends in the cricketing circle around the countries I have been to. So, I would eventually find someone to talk to about my game. Every single game I play is watched by my coach, Sunil Subramaniam, back home. My father watches all my games and while his feedbacks will not be as perfect, he always knows what is happening and will talk to my coach about my game. My dad is as crazy about cricket as I am, so the two of them talk a lot. There is no shortage of communication between us. Sometimes, my wife gets really annoyed when I keep talking cricket. Actually before getting married I spoke more about cricket than I do now. Imagine how much that would be. Even she has started to understand cricket now. She understands some of the things I am talking about, certain situations in the game, which is quite surprising. There is a big surprise in the fact that she loves watching Test cricket. She actually doesn’t prefer watching the one-day or T20 format as much. You surprised everyone when you turned up for a game in a full-sleeved shirt. What was that all about? Were you looking to try and experiment something? I wasn’t trying to suggest anything. But I felt that if there is an advantage to be gained, why should I lag behind in gaining it? If the ICC is allowing 15 degrees then why shouldn’t I make the most of it? But doing it all of a sudden is very difficult. So, I did go through some practice and I have also done it a few IPL games. People actually don’t pick on these things unless it’s come out and spoken about. Probably I didn’t exceed 15 degrees because my arm is ramrod straight. But I have been trying the doosra on and off for about two years in IPL and I even bowl it in the nets to see how it goes. I wanted to give it a try in an international game and I would feel really shy and conscious doing it in a half sleeved shirt. So, I turned up wearing full sleeves. What is your take on the recent crackdown on bowling actions? In a way it is a very sad scenario because so many bowlers who have excelled over the last three-four years have been found wanting now, and I really feel bad for them. But then, if the game is to move forward, dodgy actions have to be weeded out. Shane Warne once spoke about the strategy of attacking with defensive field and defending to an attacking field. Could you tell me what that means to you? Now, if that’s not over-thinking, what is? That’s exactly the breed of cricketer I want to be – the one who fiercely competes, come what may, the one who gets head on with what he believes and doesn’t worry about the consequences. If you say that Shane Warne is not an over-thinking cricketer then nobody else is either. He is the kind of cricketer I would love to be. He did what he thought was right. If you don’t do what you think is right, it is very difficult to deal with a career like this. About his statement of attacking and defensive bowling with opposite fields, it is bang on. That’s what you’ve got to do. If you have an attacking field, you’ve got to put the ball again and again at same place. If you have a defensive field, you can afford put the ball on four-five different spots as you please. That’s exactly what spin bowling is all about. Many batsmen who have played against Shane Warne have spoken about how he played those subtle mind games with them – chatting loudly with the captain about field placements and the batsman’s limitations. Is that something you’d like to inculcate in your game? I’d love to but I think I am at least two years away from doing that. I don’t think Shane Warne did it until he picked up 150-odd wickets. He would have gone through those first 150 wickets trying to learn what international cricket is all about and exploring his skills. After 300 Test wickets he would have become the dominating cricketer that we know him to be. Can the game of cricket be likened to poker in a way – does it boil down to who bluffs the best with a poker face? I would like to think so. But the game has changed quite a bit in that now there is more brute force than sheer skill. There is a lot of power in the game now that nullifies the beautiful art of cricket a bit. Your batting has come through amazingly well. Sometimes, when you’re batting, are you also making your bowling plans? There are many things I get right when I am batting. I know exactly what the bowler will do and won’t do. According to me, 90 percent of bowlers in world cricket bowl monotonous stuff. If they put a fine leg or a third man inside, they will never bounce you. There are only a handful of bowlers who will try to double bluff a batsman. These are the aspects of the game that excite me. I get most of these things right when I am batting. In Test matches, I get the lengths right. I know what length they will bowl with a particular field and what they will do next if I hit a short ball well. Do you try to double bluff batsmen often? You play for 150-160 days in a year and all will not be good days. You have to pick your day to try something like this. When you’re having a good day, have picked a few wickets and are on song, you feel much more confident trying it. However, when I finish my career, I would want to take pride in knowing that even on bad days, I was brave enough to try a double bluff just to see if it works. Can you recall any specific occasion where you successfully double bluffed a batsman? Yes, this is actually a very famous dismissal, of Hashim Amla in the ICC World Twenty20, 2014. I employed a particular line for that ground and wicket. The ground had huge side boundaries and there wasn’t enough pace in the wicket to sweep me out of the ground. So, I got round the stumps and tried to bowl a good carom ball to make them hit across the line, which is a very tough shot. I could also drop the length short if the batsman tried to move around in the crease. This was the strategy I employed in the Asia Cup and got really at in the World Cup. Before we played against Australia, I spoke to our analyst as to what ideally the batsmen will do to counter this ploy. There are certain teams in international cricket that will let go off the situation, get hurt and struggle. But some of them will be proactive and try to counter it. South Africa is one of them because there are some smart cricketers in there. The plan worked very well against Australia and when I went into the South Africa game, I knew which players could counter it. AB de Villiers could go down on one knee and try to hit me over fine-leg, Faf du Plessis could counter it and Hashim Amla would do it but in a smarter and subtler way. I came on to bowl in the powerplay and was very rigid with my plans. I said, I will do the same thing to Amla with the square leg and midwicket back. If he steps out or moves outside the line and hits me, good luck to him. If he looks for a wide, I’m still going to stick to the same line. I did it and as I’d expected, he left the ball and it was a wide. I stuck to the plan and went slightly inside in the line, aiming for the footmarks. Honestly, he was not ready for it, thinking it will be another wide. So, he brought his bat down and got bowled. This was one famous instance and there have been many others as well. There have also been occasions when I tried to double bluff the batsman and got fooled myself. Batsmen often talk about the zone and they all have their own definition of it. Do bowlers too have something similar? What do you feel when you’re in the zone? It’s very funny what I feel when I am in the zone. All I can see is a batsman nicking one to slip or getting caught at short leg. I firmly believe in visualization. I visualize to the extent that it disturbs my sleep. While bowling, it’s mostly midway through your spell that you get in the zone. It’s not essentially a wicket that gets you there but the feeling of how beautifully you are controlling the game, how much you are getting the batsman to defend or play shots in the areas you want him to play in. When it comes to spin bowling, how much of it is art and how much is science? It’s pure art as far as I am concerned. There is no brute force; it’s all about subtlety, how supple your fingers are and how much of revolution you can give on the ball. You can deploy science to the process but what you deliver is art. Cricket can never be beaten by science and I can give that to you in writing. A cricketer can never be modeled by science alone, but a cricketer can be made better by science. What is the toughest part of being a bowler? There are so many small aspects that condition your mind based on whether you are a bowler or a batsman. For a bowler, the best number he can achieve in an innings is 10 but for a batsman there is no limit. The mirage of numbers is very big and it dilutes the importance of what a bowler can do. It brings inequality in how mediocrity is measured for a bowler and a batsman. For me, a bowler will always be a mirage and a batsman will always be water. You are one of the few modern cricketers who have a strong educational base. Does having an engineering degree make you feel more secure as a cricketer? I don’t know. If you ask me to leave cricket and do something else, I might not willingly go and work as a software engineer or an architect. I think the only thing that can make you secure as a cricketer is love for the game. You’ve got to love the game to death. And I don’t believe there is anyone in this world who loves this game more than I do. I have seen so many cricketers and wondered, ‘Why in god’s name is he not playing international cricket?’ After thinking about it for seven years, I have derived just one answer – the guy who went on to play at the highest level, loves the game that bit more than the one who didn’t. As for my engineering degree, my parents put me through it after I played my Under-17 cricket. It’s only after I went through it that I realized how important it was for my game. And I don’t mean that it helped me technically to understand the science and the angles in cricket. Trust me, nothing of that matters. It’s the hard yards I went through in college and the tough times I endured that made me realize how much I loved cricket. I started to love the game even more after I finished my engineering. There’s only one thing that I told my parents repetitively. I said, ‘Don’t worry, I will make a decent living for myself, no matter what I do.’ There are thousands of ways in life to make a living, but there’s only one which you love the most. What is the most challenging aspect of playing the game you love so much for a living? Cricket is a game of failures. If you know how to handle failures, you will be a better cricketer. I hear that Sachin Tendulkar has a success rate of around 30 percent, which is phenomenal! Just forget about the rest. Trust me, nothing can help or prepare you for cricket because how a person handles failures solely depends on his character. The more you love something, the harder it is to accept failures related to it. So, it is incredibly hard for me to take failures in cricket and it’s a surprise that I don’t have more greys on my head. Cricket is hard but it is also a fantastic teacher. I have learned heaps from this game that my parents and teachers haven’t taught me. 80 percent of my life is made of cricket and because of cricket. As a famous Indian cricketer, how difficult is it to keep in touch with the world when you’re living in a bubble? And how difficult is it to get over the absence of all the adulation and adoration once you leave the game? I have heard of the bubble and have seen people living in it. First, I don’t live in a bubble. The bubble forms when your success brings about a massive change in your lifestyle and your relationships with the world. For me, even today, the thing that makes me the happiest is to take a walk around my house with my wife and family or to take my dogs out for a walk. I genuinely believe that staying away from the bubble shouldn’t be a problem. When I am loitering around in the area I live in, the chai wala and all other shopkeepers know me, say hello to me and are happy to see me. They have watched me grow up and they’re like family to me. Interaction with a common man is never a problem with me. At times you do feel egoistic but it’s your ego and you can beat it. I surely can. As far as the post-retirement blues are concerned, I believe it depends on how you live your life while you are playing cricket. Anil Kumble recently said that in Australia, how we bat in first 20 overs and bowl from 20-80th over will decide the fate of the match. Do you agree with that? I’ll have to agree. First of all, this is a wonderful place to play cricket and very challenging as well. If – and I hate this word, if – we prepare ourselves really well for a fight and give it all, I believe we do have it in us to win the Test series here. Every individual must say to himself, ‘I want to be the champion of this tour in whichever way I possibly can.’ I don’t know what people think about this team but I do know that we can do this. I think winning a Test series in Australia is probably bigger than winning the World Cup. If we can achieve this, it is going to be the biggest landmark of our careers.