Ravichandran Ashwin has shared a deeply personal story about how a critical article by former cricketer Sanjay Manjrekar played a defining role in shaping his career. Speaking on the Cheeky Singles show, the former India spinner revealed that while the piece initially upset him, it ultimately pushed him to improve his fitness and evolve into a more complete cricketer. Ashwin recalled that Manjrekar wrote about him after India’s tour of Australia in 2012. While the article praised his bowling skills, it also questioned his physical fitness and suggested that it was affecting both his fielding and overall impact on the field.

Ashwin admitted that reading the piece left him angry and hurt at first, but he chose to channel that emotion into something constructive. “I had messaged Sanjay Manjrekar once. After my first Australian tour, he had written a long article, and I read it completely while returning. After reading it, I got angry. Getting angry is one thing, but I felt very bad. I let it go. I used to not talk a lot to him either,” Ravichandran Ashwin said.

He added that the criticism became a turning point in his career. Over the next few years, Ashwin worked hard on his body and game, determined to prove that he was more than just a gifted spinner. In 2015, Manjrekar wrote another article praising Ashwin’s bowling and highlighting how different he was from other Indian spinners. That was when Ashwin decided to reach out and thank him.

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“The next four years, I worked a lot, as I was not a gifted athlete. Then in 2015, he wrote another article saying he was bowling very well. Then I asked for his number and messaged him that your article back then changed my life. I always look at whether there is something to learn from criticism,” he said.

Ashwin’s reflections were not limited to Manjrekar. In the same episode, former India spinner Harbhajan Singh spoke about how he used to react to broadcasters who criticised him during his playing days. Harbhajan admitted that he often took such commentary personally at the time, but later realised that most pundits were simply doing their job.

“When I was playing, I had scolded a few broadcasters. I told them, ‘What have you achieved in life that you are behind me?’ But after retirement, all those whom I felt were enemies, it never felt like they actually said anything bad about me. They were doing their job,” Harbhajan Singh said.

Ashwin, who retired from international cricket in 2024 and stepped away from the IPL after the 2025 season, also opened up about his admiration for Harbhajan in his early days. He revealed that he used to imitate Harbhajan’s bowling action while playing gully cricket and during his first U-19 days under Dinesh Karthik’s captaincy.

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“In Dinesh Karthik’s captaincy, I played U-19 for the first time. At that time, I tried to copy Harbhajan’s action a bit. I used to bat then and did not get a lot of bowling. So whenever I bowled, I used to bowl with his action. Everyone says in interviews that they are his fan, but I am a real fan because I know his first international wicket. I used to copy his action every day in gully cricket. I have seen all his games,” Ravichandran Ashwin said.

What began as admiration from afar eventually turned into a partnership on the biggest stage. Ashwin and Harbhajan went on to share the Indian dressing room across formats and were part of India’s 2011 World Cup-winning squad, closing a remarkable circle in Indian cricket.