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.”

“The nuts and bolts of bowling”

The most common perception of Ashwin’s encyclopedia-like knowledge of the game is his image as a cricket scientist. That evokes a kind of cold-hearted, unfeeling strain of thought, sometimes seen as being in opposition to creativity.

Divorcing the two is a grave disservice, and the following instance from Ganjoo can only be an example of the latter: “He's thinking in so many intricate ways. So if I remember correctly, he was talking about the various ways in which he can cock his wrist to bowl different deliveries.

“And then he was talking about how if you put a little over-spin on it, then it drops down; or you can bowl with a saucer-like action, you know. There was a lot of content, this is the one thing I remember from it. But he was just going on about the most complex parts of bowling, the nuts and bolts.”

Also read: Ashwin vs Lyon: Who is the greatest orthodox off-spinner in Tests?

But this is old news. That Ashwin is a cricket nerd will not surprise anyone, given the volume and bent of the literature on him over the last decade or so.

Even for the most number-oriented viewer, or the deepest thinker, or the biggest nerd, it is rarely the brain that first captures the imagination. What does that is action, the manifestation of the thought process. For Ganjoo, a fellow cricketing nerd, this was no different.

“I watched my first Test match in 2015 in Delhi,” he says. “It was South Africa versus India, and my seat was just above the bowler's hand. I was going downstairs.

“On the lower level, they had the cameras at the same edge. And from behind there, I watched one of his deliveries, and you could see the ball curving in the air before pitching, and then you would see it turn.

“That was the beauty. The beauty of spin bowling was that – you make the batter play with so many angles just by how you control the seam, how hard you spin it, and so on. And from then on, I was captivated by him.”

“Superhuman. Almost.”

What elevates genius, in any field, is their ability to bring out their ideas. Writers, for example, may have a plethora of them throughout their lifetime, but the only ones recognised are those that make it to the page. It’s the same with any art form, and in cricket as well – a sport that straddles the line between art and science. Without that intermediate step, genius remains unrealised.

And so, what really, truly sets Ashwin apart is his ability to bring his deep thought of the game to life.

“He was aware of every little thing he was doing to generate a kind of delivery. And the greatness of him is that he could control all that,” says Ganjoo.

“First he has, like, 15 deliveries to bowl, and he can bowl them at will. Where the mental monster meets the execution is what makes him one of the greatest cricketers of all time. He's imagined that, and he's had all those things, and he can also bowl all those things when you want him to. So that is the genius.

“The narrative is around him using his brains, but the way he could bowl the ball with the desired seam angle when he wants, and pitch it on the right length, never overpitch; this is superhuman. Almost.

“Very, very few bowlers can do it. So we don't talk about this aspect of Ashwin’s game, but this is absolutely crucial. And for that, you know, he's played club cricket for years and years. He's practiced for thousands of hours. He practises every new thing. So that is the result of that. If you can't execute it, your brain doesn't matter.”

The “Goldilocks zone” for spin

Ganjoo’s prior independent research had culminated in an article for ESPNcricinfo highlighting how Ashwin had used every possible weapon available to him to be more effective in long-form cricket. His work with the Indian team added a look into the off-spinner’s career that very few can claim to have.

He outlines a particularly telling trend in the advanced data about Ashwin’s career: “If you look at the amount of threat that a turning ball poses, usually what happens is that two to four or two to five degrees is the “Goldilocks zone” for spin, which means that batters grow up playing that amount of spin on average.

“Their play of spin is calibrated to play down a line which is two to three degrees turning from the pitching point. Therefore, two to four or two to five degrees does not pose a huge threat to the batter. Most wickets are when the ball spins more than five degrees.

“With Ashwin, it's actually that he gets a lot of wickets in that two to four degree range. And that is the genius of him – that means he's using something other than the turn from the pitch to get wickets.

“And this is especially pronounced for left handers, because there he can use the angle, he can use the drift, he can use the dip. The very fact that he gets a lot of wickets in this range, that Goldilocks zone for spin, talks to the variety of things he can use as a bowler.”

While his legacy at the international level comes from his achievements in the longest format, Ashwin did emerge as a white-ball bowler in the IPL, and will return to his first franchise, Chennai Super Kings, for the upcoming season.

Ganjoo points to the same attributes of Ashwin’s in Test cricket to venture that he should continue to have an impact at that level, post-international retirement – his incredible control gives him the ability to make the minute shifts between the 4-5, 5-6 and 6-7 metre lengths as and when required.

***

Cricket has had geniuses before Ashwin. There have been great thinkers among cricketers. But the blessing of the time we live in is that (much like his bowling), there is a confluence of factors that allow us to fully appreciate him.

First and foremost is his own existence of course, but it's also the tools available that allow us to measure the various aspects of his cricket, and the expertise built to access and interpret this information, that help cut through much of the non-cricketing noise. In another era, the din, tragically, may have been deafening.

Ashwin was made for this age – and this age was made for him.

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