Ashwin : An academician disguised as India's premier off-spinner

To an everyday outsider, cricket, by all means, is a physical sport. Simply defined, it is a contest between the bat and the ball. Add a few peripheries to this platitude, and supposedly, that is the entire sport in a nutshell.

Then, there are cricketers who explore the game with a completely new dimension - that of active thinking. These cricketers make you believe that cricket can also be an intellectual sport.

For Ravichandran Ashwin, the match began way before the first ball was bowled.

Much of what identifies Ashwin can be described in terms of who he was not. A lot of Ashwin is negative definition. He was not amongst the most athletic people who played cricket. He was not a bowler with the most natural bowling action. His name did not scream talent. His demeanour did not shout aggression. His batting stance was not a sight to behold. His fielding did not drop jaws. His exclusion from playing eleven did not make sport headlines, let alone national headlines.

And perhaps, that was the beauty of Ashwin - that he became who he became despite what convention dictated. He carved his own niche, and enlarged it, without being intrusive. He put in the hard yards, never left anything to chance, made evolution a habit rather than a necessity, and in the process, became one of India's biggest match-winners.

For Ashwin, the outcome was only a mere consequence of the process. In his dictionary, there were no bad outcomes, but only improvable processes. He did not get wickets, he took them. He induced batsmen to make mistakes. Bowling for him was a potent linear equation, where he controlled the independent variables.

He played for the joy of the game, something which is a constant subject matter of diminishing marginal utility for sportspersons, as the number of matches under one's belt increases. The joy he derived did not interfere with the competitiveness and seriousness of how he approached games. He was an academician disguised as India's premier off-spinner. He was a theoretical physicist when away from a cricket field, and an application engineer when on it.

When a legend calls it a day, we often turn to dig statistics, and try to browse through the numbers, as if to apply a veneer of objectivity to determine what the greatness meant, and how indelible the mark will supposedly be. We tend to look in numbers what we can't express in words. The sad truth about sports statistics is their inability to quantify impact. Ashwin's count of 765 international wickets and 37 fifers never conveys the complete picture of how his presence in the side lent support to his co-bowlers at the other end, of how visiting teams entered Indian stadiums with a mindset of not losing rather than winning, of how India could play an extra bowler or extra batsman with the kind of all-round handiness which he brought to the side and of how the opposition could never gauge which Ashwin will bowl to them. There are no barometers to quantify the sense of calm which he brought to his dressing rooms. There are no numerals to tell how his captains could always turn to him for a quick advice in crucial moments in matches. Having a combination of a ticking mind and a stable execution procedure is a rarity across professions. Ashwin championed this to evolving perfection.

It was almost a tranquil experience to hear Ashwin dissect games and discuss his craft. It was akin to a painter describing his painting, breaking down every stroke of the brush, spraying thoughts about his colour palette, and walking through the iteration of sketches before the final piece saw the light of day.

Ashwin's legacy as an international cricketer leaves behind important messages for people across all professions - of keeping the craft at the centre, of thinking beyond what seems apparent, of a constant realisation of there being no worthy substitutes to a hard grind, of constantly reinventing yourself, of first-principles thinking, of never settling at excellence and most of all - of not losing joy at any step.

No one can possibly sum up Ashwin as Rahul Dravid did in the foreword of Ashwin's autobiography, "I have the streets" : "His love for the game is not merely about finding success, it is about elevating an art form."

Thank you, Ashwin, for turning cricket into both art and science.

(This article of Urvish Mehta first appeared here)

(Author Urvish Paresh Mehta is an Arijit Singh devotee, life’s very own disciple, a perennial seeker of humour, a notoriously spiritual mortal, a treasurer of memories, an enthusiast for metaphors, a religious cricket fan, a keen admirer of the intricacies of the human mind with a penchant for pen, and amongst other things, a Chartered Accountant. He blogs at urvishmehta.tumblr.com and can be reached at [email protected])