Ashwin’s comments come only days after his coach at the Delhi-based franchise, Australia legend Ricky Ponting, had warned him against using the mode of dismissal in the upcoming IPL 2020.

Dinesh Karthik on you-know-what 😉

Do you agree with him? pic.twitter.com/HcyWfjW9SN

— Wisden India (@WisdenIndia) August 24, 2020

Prompted by India and Tamil Nadu team-mate Dinesh Karthik, who had given his own view on the usage of the term ‘Mankad’ to refer to the dismissal, Ashwin made a radical suggestion on Twitter.

“Make it [deliveries in which batsmen back up] a free ball for the bowler,” he wrote. “If the batsmen gets [sic] out of that ball, the batting team will be docked 5 runs. Free hit adds to the drama for a batter, let’s give a chance to the bowlers too. As of now everyone watches the game hoping that ‘the bowlers will get smacked today’.”

Ashwin dismissed Rajasthan Royals’ Jos Buttler with a Mankad in the last edition of the IPL, prompting a huge uproar and reopening the debate on the dismissal. Ashwin has since campaigned for the taboo surrounding the dismissal to be shed, but last week, DC coach Ponting warned his off-spinner against implementing it in the upcoming IPL season.

“I’ll be having a chat with him about [Mankad], that’s the first thing I’ll do,” Ponting said on The Grade Cricketer Podcast. “Obviously, he wasn’t in our squad last year, he’s one of our players that we tried to afford to bring in this year.

“Look, he’s a terrific bowler, and he’s done a great job in the IPL for a long period of time now, but I must admit watching that last season, as soon as it happened and he did that, I actually sat our boys down and said ‘Look, I know he’s done it, there’ll be others around the tournament who’ll think about doing this well but that’s not going to be the way that we play our cricket. We won’t be doing that’.”