Indian spinner Ravichandran Ashwin recently recalled his experience of being coached by former Tamil Nadu coach WV Raman. According to the Indian spinner, Raman was “a hard taskmaster” and “a lot of people feared having conversations with him.”
Ashwin recalls
“When I made my debut, I had walked into the Chepauk stadium and Raman was the coach," Ashwin said in a video on BCCI.tv.
“(Raman was) a hard taskmaster and a lot of people feared having conversations with him. So, we were going through this practice session one day and he was giving these fielding sessions. But the amount of pressure he used to inflict on people who were throwing the ball on the top of the stumps was incredible,” he added.
While talking about his training, Ashwin revealed that he “used to question him” and he did not “really have fear speaking in the team meeting.”
“If you didn’t throw the ball at the top of the stumps, he (Raman) would just have a go at you. This kept happening for 10 days, 12 days, 2 weeks, 3 weeks, and we got a little comfortable. He used to prod me at the net, I used to question him and I didn’t really have fear speaking in the team meeting,
“One day, he just took me to the side and said, ‘Ashwin, you’ve just come into the side. I appreciate you speaking in the team meetings, but you also need to understand why we say certain things. We say it with the intent to make sure that once you go to the Indian team, you are not found wanting with your basics’. And that really opened the floodgates for me and Raman forever. Because I knew this man had the best intent in place for anybody who walked into the ground inside this team,” recalled the 35-year-old Tamil Nadu-born spinner.
Ashwin's record
It is important to mention that recently Aswhin overtook former Indian skipper Kapil Dev’s tally of 434 Test wickets. He currently has 436 Test wickets.
In the first Test against Sri Lanka, Ashwin exhibited a terrific all-round display. In the first innings he scored 61 runs off 82 balls. Later he picked up two wickets in the first innings and four wickets in the second innings.
