Engineer, cricketer, a popular youtuber and now an author too. Parallel processing or multi-tasking comes easy to R Ashwin, who would rather fail than play safe whether it’s life or cricket.

The 37-year-old off-spinner, one of the sharpest minds in international cricket right now, is also a refreshingly candid voice with 516 Test wickets lending considerable weight to his views.

He is currently enjoying the critical success of his book “I Have The Streets: A Kutti Cricket Story’. Co-authored by Sidharth Monga and published by Penguin Random House, it chronicles Ashwin’s life till 2011 and also gives a peak into his mind, which enjoys probability analysis as much as decoding a difficult batter.

“I am living my life, that’s it. I am not thinking about accomplishing ‘A’, ‘B’ or ‘C’ (targets). I am staying in the moment. I am a creative person in general, and if I feel I want to do something, I will go ahead and do it. (Whether it’s) right or wrong, is something that I will assimilate later,” Ashwin told PTI in an exclusive interview.

He wasn’t always this fearless though. There was an insecure side to him as a child but he outgrew it as time went by, realising that his fears were paralysing him.

Once that was dealt with, Ashwin says he became somewhat unflappable and it has been evident in his growth as a cricketer. From bowling carrom balls on Chennai’s streets as a kid, his metamorphosis into India’s premier spinner has been quite a ride.

He has taken criticism on the chin and has responded with a bagful of wickets, refusing to let that “outside noise” disturb the equilibrium of his mind. And it is this system optimisation, as the engineer in him would say, which allows him to take risks, and not be afraid of failure.

“I’m not insecure at all. I would rather fail in life than be absolutely safe. That’s my character. I don’t have the common insecurities that people have,” he asserts with the same clarity with which he decodes complex cricket laws in his social media feeds, which don’t take long to become viral trends.

“Breaking away from my insecurity (as a child) gave me a great insight into how I can exploit somebody else’s insecurity. And that’s how I see cricket or life in general,” he explained, letting out perhaps the secret of his understated aggression on the field.

Coming back to parallel processing, the engineering jargon for execution of multiple computations at the same time, Ashwin said the COVID crisis, during which almost everyone battled the fear of loss, was the time he recalibrated his approach to life and realised that in the end, he had just one chance to do what he wanted.

Out came the youtube channel during the lockdown and his articulate views on cricket, cricket laws and cricketers now have over 1.5 million subscribers.

It shouldn’t be forgotten that like most people around him, Ashwin too battled the trauma of seeing his loved ones hospitalised due to the dreaded infection at that time.

“The time that I have is pretty limited. I do plan but for me it’s about living life. I felt cricket took away a lot of my time since 2010 (his India debut) but COVID gave me a chance to take a break, and you know, assess where I was,” he recalls.

“It (the COVID-forced break) has given me wings over the last four years to be able to express myself, expand my creativity zones and so on and so forth,” he says, referring to his success as a rare outspoken voice in Indian cricket.

According to him, it all boils down to being fearless or having the ability to see the fun side of risks, something that a visit to a casino taught him back in 2009.

“If you go to the Casino, thinking of how much money you will make, you will pretty much end up without a rupee. But when you go with the intention of having fun and wanting to lose the money that you have, you always go back a much richer person. It was actually a big learning experience,” he explains.

But that’s not his only point of reference for life lessons, he could pick those up as easily from a movie, or a web series or books.

Talking of books, he knows that telling one’s story to the world is fraught with risk.

It is not limited to opening up a hitherto unseen side of yours to people who might judge without knowing. There’s also the danger of unknowingly hurting others when unpleasant experiences become public knowledge.

“I think hurting someone is an immensely painful journey. But if tomorrow I do write about hurtful instances of mine then it’s because people who are on the other side, will have hurt me. They are obviously gonna feel bad about it, because nobody intentionally hurts you,” he says, underscoring his belief in the inherent goodness of individuals.

And that’s why he prefers to look at painful episodes as life lessons, harsh but necessary to build a person. He details one such instance in his book when, during his time with Chennai Super Kings, a team official refused to entertain his plea for a good IPL ticket in 2010 despite the fact that he was a major contributor to the side’s success that season.

“Look, people who give you an opportunity to learn harsh lessons in life are Gurus in my book. I didn’t want to go and confront the guy. But for me it is an incident, it happened, and it fuelled the fire in me.

“I wanted to become a better person. I wanted to become a better cricketer. I am thankful for the person who did that to me, because I think in some way or the other he fuelled my desire to do well,” he says.

That incident was also an important lesson in understanding that the world is not a fair place.

“It’s not. See a lot of people come to me and say, what goes around comes around. The world is a very fair place, it’s not. It can be very unfair on a lot of people. When you win, somebody else loses,” he points out, the clarity of thought shining through once again much like his eyes, which light up at the first sight of a batter’s vulnerability.

Watch: Ravichandran Ashwin interview: On his book, an ode to Chennai gully cricket, and why 3 Idiots was a turning point

Ravichandran Ashwin has just hit a pull shot and the ball has landed in a temple next door. On the streets of Ramakrishnapuram in Chennai’s West Mambalam, street cricket came alive between four and six every evening. In the Nineties and early-2000s a young Ashwin would be at the centre of all the sporting action.

After a hectic day at school, it was the sight of a bat and ball and his ‘area’ friends that would bring Ashwin utmost joy. Some days, he would be a hero, scoring lots of runs. On others, he would have to beg for gaaji, a word popular in Tamil Nadu to describe ‘batting’. And on still other days, he would have to face the stern uncle next door, chiding him for breaking the window glass with a monstrous six.

But every day, Ashwin would go to bed dreaming of the events that unfolded in the evening and look forward to more drama and action the next day.

Today, he is considered India’s top off-spinner, has a whopping 500 Test wickets to his name and a proven track record in all formats; yet, the allure of the West Mambalam streets still holds sway. “I would trade anything to go back. The joys of being on those lanes, fighting for those 2-3 runs and the ball going into the well… all these are great stories,” he says, at Taj Coromandel, on the sidelines of his recent book launch.

Ashwin has several such stories to share in the book, I Have the Streets: A Kutty Cricket Story (published by Penguin Random House India), in which he, along with cricket writer Siddharth Monga, paints a candid picture of his days before professional cricket and the little joys in the cricket-mad streets of Chennai. “Writing this gave me several goosebump moments. Today, people don’t play cricket on the streets as much as before. I just feel that after reading this, if someone wishes to be out there in the evenings playing cricket, I would have achieved what I set out to.”

Write approach

The seed of I Have the Streets was planted in Ashwin’s head as he sifted through many novels – he is a fan of Clive Cussler, Chetan Bhagat and has read all the Ponniyin Selvan books – and also binged on the autobiographies of Australian cricketers Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting. “Reading Ponting’s book, it took me to his household in Launceston, Tasmania. When I read it, I was like, ‘Hey, this is what my life looked like.’ With my book, I wanted to be very organic and real.”

And so, I Have the Streets, apart from being an ode to the Madras of yore,also gives a peek into Ashwin’s middle-class Tamil household. His parents and grandfather, all instrumental in him taking to the game, form pivotal characters, as do his friends. It also takes us into his days at Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan school, where he met his wife Prithi for the first time. “The book also shows me having self-doubts and being vulnerable, but that’s what makes it real. A lot of people want to paint themselves perfectly, and I’m not perfect.”

A ticket to happiness

Ashwin is a huge fan of films and makes references to cinema in all his content, be it on YouTube or his book. “I’ve learnt a lot of life through movies. If I watch Ghilli, I would like to understand the friendship surrounding actor Vijay and his household rather than me going to Madurai and doing those fights. I resonate with that.”

He describes watching Aamir Khan’s 3 Idiots as a turning point in his career. “I saw that movie at the right stage of my life, and it gave me the stamp to say that I am probably on the right path. I was so excited when it was remade in Tamil with Vijay, because I’m a huge of the actor as he has multiple abilities of dancing, action and a comic touch.”

Spirit of the game

Ashwin is widely considered a ‘thinking, competitive cricketer’ in the international sporting community now, but he stresses that it has always been that way.

Ravichandran Ashwin at his book launch
| Photo Credit:
VEDHAN M

“The game was an avenue for me to compete. Even now, I’m every bit the same gully cricketer who played on the streets of Ramakrishnapuram. It’s the same fight I have in me.” Ashwin even brings a reference to ‘Mankading’, a style of dismissal that involves the non-striking batter backing up. “In the book, I recall running out my friend, Bhuvanesh at the non-striker’s end, in street cricket. Many years later, I ran out Jos Butler in an IPL game. It really doesn’t matter to me, because for me, Bhuvanesh is more precious to me than Butler will ever be. The fact that we could go hang out at a soup shop that very evening and have a great time is what makes gully cricket special.”

Ashwin is looking to be actively engaged with the game in the future too. Next month, he will play for the Dindigul Dragons in the Tamil Nadu Premier League (TNPL). He is also busy shooting content for his popular YouTube channel, which is a delight for anyone interested in Chennai’s two primary loves, cricket and cinema. He will also soon come out with a part two of I Have The Streets as well, and also plans to host a cricket quiz sometime soon.

And, when time permits, Ashwin hopes to hit the streets of West Mambalam and Somasundaram Ground in T Nagar yet again, to play street cricket. “I want to do something called the ‘motta maadi cricket’ (terrace cricket), just like ‘motta maadi music’, a popular music concept. I want to bring back the joys of playing cricket in the terraces.” Chennai, are you ready?