I used to respond to pressure in past, but now wants to play with smile on face: Ashwin

Chennai: Ravichandran Ashwin on Friday said he has liberated himself from the clutches of external and internal pressure, and now he is just looking to play cricket “with a smile on face.” Ashwin made a back-on-the-wall hundred on the first day of the opening Test here against Bangladesh to rescue India from a precarious 144 for six in the company of an equally resolute Ravindra Jadeja.

The 38-year-old leveraged on that innings to drive home the point that he now only responds to pressure situations on a cricket field, unlike in the past when he reacted to every needle-point.

“I do enjoy and embrace pressure. There’s no doubt about it. It does give you opportunities to be able to be pushed to a corner and then try and respond. But I was critical too, earlier (of himself and others), because a lot of pressure has been put on me by people. I’ve put pressure on myself,” Ashwin told reporters on Friday.

“The pressure I’ve always responded to – in answering someone, in a performance or in a press conference. But it’s not like that now. I want to play cricket with a smile on my face. I promised myself 4-5 years ago that I won’t respond to anyone, and I’ve been maintaining that till now,” he added.

The mental detachment to situations and people around him has helped Ashwin to clearly demarcate between his primary and secondary suits – bowling and batting.

“Bowling and batting are very separate sports in the same game. One is done consciously, and the other one is done subconsciously.

“For me to compartmentalise both has taken its own due and at this stage, I’m able to sequence that and split both of them,” he began.

So, how did he keep his focus on the batting during his 189-minute innings, spanning over three sessions and consuming 240 balls? Ashwin took precisely the opposite route that he would have taken as a bowler.

“The mind can play tricks because I’m a bowler who plays on 12-18 balls or 24 balls ahead when I’m sequencing it. But as a batter, I shouldn’t do that. So, I just used my experience to focus on the ball and hitting it as I see it,” he noted.

The Chennai man also said he has worked on his batting in the last three years to add more layers to it, so that he can be more versatile from a team perspective.

“So, I have worked a lot (on his batting)… quite a lot on how I can maximise my shots, maximise my game, work on how I can play fast bowling, all that sort of stuff. So, glad it’s coming out nicely. I am pretty content with what’s happening.” The fructification of his efforts has also left him at a happy space – personally as well as professionally, and he enjoys that a lot in the highly competitive world of modern sport.

“You feel happy about it, having been in a contest and coming out successful out of the contest. So, yeah, the underlying truth is that it gives me a lot of happiness competing in this game.

“This is just a vehicle for me to compete and feel good about myself and be happy at the end of the day,” he elaborated.