Midway through the Border-Gavaskar Trophy last month, one of India’s greatest players of all time, Ravichandran Ashwin, retired from the international game – to no small degree of shock and awe.

Between an ongoing series and speculation over the sudden nature of the announcement, his career may not have been celebrated as much as it could, or should, have.

Ashwin has been a rare breed of cricketer in that virtually nothing about his life or his career has been a secret. Many players have taken part in multiple interviews like he has, and many have come out with books on their life. But very few, in addition to this, have a personal public channel, and speak with the kind of openness that he does.

Read more: Don’t mourn R Ashwin’s retirement: his next innings promises to be even better

Fellow players and coaches who have worked with Ashwin at close quarters have often highlighted his innovation, with additional praise for his work ethic. It can be difficult to pay tribute to someone who has been around as long as Ashwin has, without simply repeating what’s been said before.

But it can be done, with a change of lens.

“Like a fountain of cricket knowledge”

Enter Himanish Ganjoo, data consultant for the Indian men’s cricket team between 2022 and 2024. Ganjoo’s stint with the side ended after the T20 World Cup win in June last year, but his expertise on the topic of Ashwin in particular is unique.

In conjunction with head coach Rahul Dravid, they sought to create a culture of data analysis within the Indian team, built on insights gleaned from advanced ball-tracking data. As a more cerebral approach to the game, it’s no surprise that the player most celebrated for his cricketing brain was piqued by it.

“Ashwin was always coming up with ideas, even in the meetings, and because India were doing novel things with the data for the first time, they got very excited,” Ganjoo says in an exclusive chat with Wisden.com.

“So he was also quite excited, and he had a lot of questions about what we could do with the data and so on. So you could really tell his curiosity and his sort of love for the game, because he always used to keep thinking about things he could do with it.”

He recalls one of his earliest interactions with Ashwin: “He was talking to Rahul bhai [Dravid], at the table, and it was five or 10 minutes. And in those 10 minutes, he spoke so much cricket. I was sitting there next to him, and I was about to cry because I was just realising that, you know this, this guy is like a fountain of cricket knowledge, and he's constantly thinking about it.”