Ravichandran Ashwin, who played a key role with the bat in India’s win against Bangladesh in Mirpur on Sunday (December 25), endeavored to play down his contribution but insisted that he could never have gone down easily.
Ravichandran Ashwin, who played a key role with the bat in India’s win against Bangladesh in Mirpur on Sunday (December 25), endeavored to play down his contribution but insisted that he could never have gone down easily.
His man-of-the-match show included an unbeaten 42 in an unbroken 71-run eighth-wicket partnership with Shreyas Iyer that raised comparisons with the more accomplished batters in the side.
“Oh no,” he quipped, refusing to be drawn into parallels with the other batters. “It was just my day,” he told Cricbuzz.
Captain KL Rahul said the Indian dressing room was tense while the batters were haggling with a difficult pitch and pillaging Bangladesh bowlers while chasing a tricky 145-run target. However, Ashwin said that he was unaware of the pressures and put stock in things that are in his control.
“I went and sat outside (of the dressing room), so I had no idea (what was happening inside). I am a nervous watcher of others’ batting but once I have the ball or bat I always believe I can control things.”
After the match, Ashwin praised Iyer for handling the situation deftly.
“It was one of those games where we let the game drift whenever we could have shut it off. Shreyas batted beautifully. Sometimes in these situations you feel like you have to get ahead of things, they bowled good lines and I felt that we didn’t trust our defences enough. Loved the way Shreyas batted,”
he told the host broadcaster.
Ashwin, a demonstrated match-winner with the ball, wriggled India out of difficult situations with the bat twice in the recent times, more importantly against Pakistan at the MCG in the Twenty World Cup where he held his nerves in a difficult situation and guaranteed India beat their arch-rivals.
“I don’t like to go down without a fight. I have always put myself in tough situations from the age of 8. So I try and fight every single day and I don’t like to lose like every member of my team. These are the two occasions where I came out on the right side,”
“So glad.”