Ravichandran Ashwin walked into the sunset of his international cricket career earlier this month, announcing his retirement in the middle of the Australia tour and returned back home at the conclusion of the third Test in Brisbane. But he is not done with domestic cricket yet.
Ashwin will continue to play club cricket, specifically the Indian Premier League (IPL), where he will reunite with Chennai Super Kings and his former captain MS Dhoni in the coming season next year.
The CSK franchise bought Ashwin for Rs 9.5 crore at the IPL auction in November this year to bring the off-spinner back in their camp.
Speaking about his reunion with Dhoni in CSK’s yellow jersey, Ashwin shared his insights on Dhoni as a captain on the Sky Sports Cricket podcast.
“It is a very simple question to answer. In my head, I think he does most of the basic things right, and most of the other captains miss the basic elementary things, which makes the game look much more difficult for them,” said Ashwin, who ended up playing 106 Tests, which saw him picking 537 wickets.
Only Anil Kumble has more Test wickets, 619, among the Indian bowlers.
Ashwin was also part of the team that won the 2011 ODI World Cup under Dhoni’s captaincy, but didn’t get many chances as Harbhajan Singh was India’s first-choice spinner in that campaign.
Sharing an example of how Dhoni’s brain works on the field, Ashwin said: “He would never, for example, give the bowler the ball. The first thing he would say is to take your field and bowl to the field. He hated the fact when a batter came to bat and you gave a loose delivery. He wouldn’t take me off bowling if I gave two or three boundaries in an over, that is well earned,” Ashwin continued.
“If I gave a new batter a ball to cut or drive, he would be livid. He would make me feel my place, and he would take me off bowling. That is a very basic essence of cricket. Over the years, I realised people have forgotten the basics.”
Dhoni has led CSK to record five IPL titles, besides winning the T20 World Cup (2007), ODI World Cup (2011) and the Champions Trophy (2013) as India captain.
Ashwin said Dhoni has his unique way of motivating the bowler.
“There are certain facets of the game that don’t change, and MS Dhoni keeps it simple on those accounts. Last year in the IPL, he got Tushar Despande, and he got the best out of him. I know what exactly MS Dhoni would have told him. He would have told him to get hit on the longer side of the boundary and give me two runs less than you gave last year. That does two things to the bowler. It relieves the pressure, and it makes him think ‘I can set a very small set of goals’,” said the 38-year-old Ashwin, who enjoyed a successful 14-year international career.
