Xtra Time Web Desk: Team India star spinner Ravichandran Ashwin had played sustaining injuries to help India secure their Gabba feat and win the Test series in Australia.
Ashwin battled an abdomen tear and back injury to bowl almost 50 overs and bat more than a session to steer India to victory in Sydney
Speaking to sports journalist Boria Majumder on his show ‘Backstage with Boria’ Ashwin said :”After the Adelaide Test, I had an abdomen tear. In Sydney, I was bowling before the game, and I felt I cannot go on in a Test match if I had to bowl 100 overs. The question asked to me was can you bowl 50 overs in the first innings and 50 in the second innings. I said I can bowl beyond pain barriers, because if there is one thing that I will never doubt about myself, is that I’ll never back down from a contest. I may die on the cricket field, but I will never back away from a contest”.
In Sydney, when there were murmurs about how I gave up, it felt like I was being killed from inside. So the only thing I wanted to achieve in life was to make sure that I go back, die on the cricket field trying to win a game for India. If at all Ashwin is a cricketer today, it’s about the fight this dog has, not how much quality this dog has,” added Ashwin.
He went saying how he’s down with injuries multiple times in last few years. “I started training differently between 2015-16. I wanted to add some power into it, because T20 cricket was getting into this power domain sort of thing. I trained differently and what happened was, my body has limitations. My hip structure is not the same as someone else as I had hip injuries when I was younger and my hip just couldn’t function in the way that it does for somebody else,” Ashwin said.
“For me to realise all these things, it takes time. I am a cricketer. Most of us are cricketers. We are not into sports science, we’re not into exercise science. When I started training differently, my body initially gave good results, but then it started giving up,” he added.
He revealed that he nearly decided to quit the game, but then toiled to bring back enjoyment in playing cricket.
“I had lost the joy in 2018-19 season in Australia, literally saying ‘what the hell are you doing continuing to this game?’ I didn’t feel like I was enjoying. There was no joy. And I have worked immensely hard, mentally and physically, to bring back the joy back to my life of playing the sport and I won’t give that up for any trade-off in life,” Ashwin said.