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Ravichandran Ashwin is undoubtedly among one of the top spinners that sport of cricket has ever seen. The 35-year-old has sensational bowling stats, especially in Test cricket, where he has 427 wickets to his name in 81 matches. However, his career has been nothing short of a roller-coaster ride, which has been hampered by numerous injuries.
During 2018-19, the off-spinner suffered various injuries during India's tours of England and Australia. Ashwin recently went on to claim that he also contemplated retirement because of the fact that people were not sensitive enough to injuries.
Ashwin opens up on fans' insensitive comments about his injuries
In a conversation with The Cricket Monthly, the off-spinner went on to reveal how he really felt about the comments of people. He also spoke quite honestly and candidly regarding one major issue persisting in the cricket fraternity.
Reflecting on the opinion of fans that he only gets injured away from home, Ashwin said, "People probably know of such precedents with other cricketers, but I just felt like it was aimed at getting at me. Maybe they believed they were right in doing so. I've got no issues with that. But injuries do happen to people. Only when it hits them personally do they have the empathy."
He added, "Empathy is being able to put yourself in others' shoes, and feel, "Hey what if it happens to me?" I feel as a cricketing community, we lack that."
Ashwin talks about his road to recovery
The 35-year-old also talked about the one final shot that he took which helped revive his fitness and career. He added that his trainer AT Rajamani Prabhu worked about 8-10 weeks extensively with him in 2019, which made a huge difference.
"This one final shot was to get my body physically ready. I believed if I was physically all right, nobody can stop me. So at least I can look back at myself and say, "You know, I gave it everything." And if it didn't work, I was okay to live with that. And that is why I believe giving that one shot was important," Ashwin said.
As it turned out, there was no stopping Ashwin after that. He was exceptional for India in the WTC 2019-21 cycle and played a key role in their road to finals. And although injuries haunted him once again during India's tour of Australia down under, it did not stop him from playing a historic match-saving knock in Sydney.