Ravichandran Ashwin
Photo Credit: (Twitter)

Veteran Indian spinner Ravichandran Ashwin went past Kapil Dev‘s tally of 434 Test wickets in the first Test against Sri Lanka. He is now India’s second-highest wicket-taker in Test cricket and only behind Anil Kumble who has 619 wickets to his name. The off-spinner has 436 wickets to his name in 85 Test matches for India.

Ravichandran Ashwin made his first-class debut back in 2006 for his stateside Tamil Nadu. Former Indian cricketer WV Raman was their coach back then. In an interview posted by the BCCI, Ashwin opened up on his beginnings for the stateside under Raman. Ashwin recalled his first experience of being trained under Raman, whom he called a “hard taskmaster.”

WV Raman
WV Raman. Image-ICC

“When I made my debut, I had walked into the Chepauk stadium and Raman was the coach. (He was) a hard taskmaster and a lot of people feared having conversations with him. So, we were going through this practice session one day and he was giving these fielding sessions. But the amount of pressure he used to inflict on people who were throwing the ball on the top of the stumps was incredible,” Ashwin recalled.

The Indian off-spinner further recalled how Raman made him more acknowledging towards feedback and suggestions. He added saying that there was a lot of intent with which the former Indian cricketer worked with the players during that time.

WV Raman Had The Best Intent For Anybody: Ravichandran Ashwin

Ravichandran Ashwin
Photo Credit: (Twitter)

“One day, he just took me to the side and said, ‘Ashwin, you’ve just come into the side. I appreciate you speaking in the team meetings, but you also need to understand why we say certain things. We say it with the intent to make sure that once you go to the Indian team, you are not found wanting with your basics’. And that really opened the floodgates for me and Raman forever. Because I knew this man had the best intent in place for anybody who walked into the ground inside this team,” said Ashwin.

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Ashwin made a comeback into the Indian team after recovering from an injury that kept him out of the white-ball games against the West Indies and Sri Lanka. The second Test between the two sides arts from March 12 in Bengaluru.

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Anshuman Roy is an author at Cricketaddictor. He has been working with the organization since January 2022 and he has written more than 6000 articles for the website.