Ravichandran Ashwin, India’s premier off-spinner in Test cricket, has always been known as a player who constantly looks for increasing his armory by enhancing his skills and recently he added a new dimension to his repertoire of skills- the leg spin. Currently, Ashwin is playing for Rest of India in the Irani Cup against Vidarbha, revealed that he has finally mastered the art and was seen bowling leg-spin during the encounter at Nagpur.
Interestingly, Ashwin’s action resembles a lot like former Indian coach Anil Kumble. He has not featured in the Indian limited-overs squad since July last year and had spoken about his intentions of developing the leg-spin to build his armory going into the IPL 2018.
Also read: R Ashwin Reveals His Plans As KXIP Skipper
During an interview with the reporters, the talented off-spinner said, “I am just trying to build my armory. I used to bowl good leg breaks with my off-spin action when I was playing league cricket in Chennai. Over a period of time, in a search to get my stock ball right, I obviously had to cut out a lot of those things.”
He further added, “I had possessed a lot more variations. Having bowled off-break as the stock ball for almost 10 years, trying to change things around is challenging. But I don’t really settle for anything. At no point in my career, I thought ‘this is it’ and decided to settle for the rest of my career.”
Here is the video of his legspinners:
SPECIAL: Introducing @ashwinravi99, the leg spinner!
We have seen him bamboozle the best batsmen with his off breaks, but the ace spinner has added another dimension to his bowling and that is leg spin. Here’s the latest from R Ashwin’s bag of tricks https://t.co/8M9XvWgZZ3 pic.twitter.com/mctkWQCUTB— BCCI (@BCCI) March 14, 2018
Ashwin will be leading Kings XI Punjab (KXIP) in the upcoming season of the Indian Premier League (IPL). His captaincy was announced during a Facebook live session conducted by former India batting star and KXIP mentor Virender Sehwag last month.
Also read: R Ashwin To Replaced Ravindra Jadeja In Irani Cup
KXIP on Tuesday unveiled their new jersey and also conducted a Facebook Live session for the same. Talking about his captaincy, Ashwin said, “It is a new challenge. You’ll not be able to predict my next move. All players you think are going to open will play in the middle order & all the middle-order batsmen will open. I’ll try & stay as unpredictable as possible.”