In 16 seasons’ worth of IPL cricket, he did everything his teams expected him to, and then a little bit more
ESPNcricinfo staff27-Aug-2025A debut to forgetAshwin made his debut for his home IPL team Chennai Super Kings (CSK) in 2009, in their first game of the season against Mumbai Indians in Cape Town. But the debut was rather unmemorable as Ashwin, rumoured to have been brought on board primarily as a net bowler, didn’t get a chance to bowl after MS Dhoni’s CSK opted to field, and was not required to bat as CSK lost with seven wickets down.With the team management preferring Muthiah Muralidaran as their main spinner, Ashwin played just one other match that season. But it was a sign of things to come both from Ashwin and CSK, as he returned 2 for 13 in a low-scoring, spin-dominated win over Kings XI Punjab.R Ashwin is mobbed by his team-mates after getting Chris Gayle out in the first over•Associated PressThe new-ball starYou might score 205 in a T20 game, but if Chris Gayle is in the opposition, and enjoying one of the greatest seasons of any IPL batter, it can quickly seem like too few. Enter Ashwin, with the new ball, in the first over of Royal Challengers Bangalore’s chase in the IPL 2011 final. Never one to not think each of his deliveries through – with respect to the batter in front of him – Ashwin started with flight and big turn with his first two balls, and then pushed up his pace with his third, and got the ball to skid on. Attempting to cut, Gayle nicked, and Dhoni did the rest.”The plan was […] that I’d spin a few past him and then slip in an arm ball to get him out lbw or bowled,” Ashwin later said. “But […] it spun and bounced and I think Gayle was a little late for his shot.”Ashwin ended the tournament as CSK’s highest wicket-taker, with 20 strikes.It was also one of the initial acts of Ashwin the new-ball bowler. No spinner has bowled as much in the powerplay in the IPL. Ashwin leads with 1252 balls in the first six overs. Sunil Narine, second on the list, has bowled 918. Only three others – Harbhajan Singh, Axar Patel and Krunal Pandya – have crossed 450. That’s a fairly dramatic difference.If it can be done, R Ashwin made sure he tried to do it•BCCIOffspinner? Legspinner? YesThroughout his career, Ashwin has been unafraid to experiment. Turning the ball right and left, experimenting with speeds and lines and lengths, wide of the crease and close to the stumps, the pause at the point of delivery, carrom balls, reverse carrom balls – you name it and he’s done it. He’s even bowled legspin, which, really, offspinners are not meant to do. Not just the odd legbreak, mind you, but the legspinner’s full repertoire.It was in 2015 that he started trying to get it right, and by 2017, he had what he needed. And in IPL 2018, his first season with Kings XI Punjab (now Punjab Kings), it was on show at the IPL too.It didn’t actually happen till much later, but here’s R Ashwin warning Steven Smith for leaving his crease in 2012•AFPNot an inch given…He made things tough for the spirit-of-cricket obsessives on more occasion than one. Take running out the non-striker backing up. He wasn’t the first to do it, but he ended up making himself an ambassador for the dismissal, which is legal but frowned upon by many.As far back as 2012, there was Steven Smith in the line of Ashwin’s fire and finger-pointing ire, being asked to stay in or else. He had gone ahead and run out Sri Lanka’s Lahiru Thirimanne in this manner in an ODI the same year, only for his captain Virender Sehwag to withdraw the appeal. The actual didn’t happen until 2019, when Jos Buttler became the first run-out-backing-up victim in the IPL. Courtesy Ashwin, of course.If it’s legal, he’ll do it. If you don’t like it, hard luck.2:15
Retired out – yay or nay?
Retired, but not hurt about itCut to 2022, and again, entirely legal, but rarely put to practice: retiring out. And it had to be Ashwin to do it even if, really, the call must have been the Rajasthan Royals team management’s to make.It was against Lucknow Super Giants at Mumbai’s Wankhede Stadium on April 10. Ashwin walked out at No. 6 with Royals well behind the ideal scoring rate, 67 for 4 in 9.5 overs. Ashwin did something of a rebuilding job in Shimron Hetmyer’s company, scoring 28 off 23 balls, but with ten balls left in the innings, he suddenly rushed off the pitch, bringing the more explosive Riyan Parag to the crease.At his post-match press conference, Royals’ cricket boss Kumar Sangakkara said Ashwin had himself played a role in the move’s conception. “It was a combination of both [Ashwin and the team management],” Sangakkara said. “It was the right time to do that, Ashwin himself was asking from the field as well, and we had discussed it just before that, as to what we would do.”Ashwin wasn’t the first batter to be retired out, and he won’t be the last, but it hadn’t happened in the IPL before that night.To Ashwin, it wasn’t even something that had to be analysed. Just something that was done, and something that should be done more often, especially in T20s. “Already we’re late, but I believe this will happen a lot in the coming days,” he said. “I don’t think it will be a stigma like running someone out at the non-striker’s end.”
