Premier Indian Test spinner Ravichandran Ashwin recently shared a horrific incident from his early playing days. In Cricbuzz’s new series named Spicy Pitch, R Ashwin was invited as a guest. While he shared several anecdotes from his early playing days, he shared a story that was most interesting than the others. Ashwin recounted a harrowing incident that happened with him during the days when he was playing tennis ball cricket.
He said he was threatened and nearly abducted by the opposition players who were about to chop off his fingers. “We were supposed to play a final. As I was about to leave, there were four or five guys who came in Royal Enfields, properly muscular and big. They picked me up and said come we’ve got to go. I asked ‘who?’ and they said ‘you’re playing the match here, right? We’ve come to pick you up” Ashwin told Cricbuzz.
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“I was like wow they’ve arranged for a pick-up, and it feels great. I mean Royal Enfield… what happened is I sat behind one person and another person sat right behind me as if I was going to get off and go. I was properly sandwiched between both of them”, R Ashwin further added.
R Ashwin also shared how the opposition players took him to a tea stall nearly and lured him into having snacks saying that they are here to help him.
“I must have been about 14 or 15. They took me to a posh tea stall. A tea shop is a big culture thing in Chennai. “It was around 3:30-4:00 PM and I said the match is going to start, let’s go. So they said, ‘no, no, we’re actually from the opposition, we wanted to stop you from playing. If you go and play we’ll make sure your fingers are not there.”
The Indian spinner also spoke about the spin variations he has learned over the years in his career. He said that he picked the delivery from a guy named Karthik Sekhar aka SK. He further said that after learning the delivery from him in 10 to 15 days he never met him again in his life.
Ravichandran Ashwin’s international and IPL career stats have taken a dip in the recent past. R Ashwin is a part of the Indian Test squad for New Zealand tour 2020 which starts from February 21. Ashwin took 20 wickets in 2019, the year which kickstarted the World Test Championship.
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Meanwhile, Delhi Capitals owner Parth Jindal recently tweeted on the inclusion of R Ashwin in the Indian limited-overs squad after India were whitewashed by the Kiwis in the recently concluded T20I series.