R. Ashwin reflects on major life lesson from Rajnikanth's movie ahead of 100th Test

Veteran India off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin will be playing the 100^th Test of his career as India take on England in the fifth match from Thursday, March 7 at Himachal Pradesh Cricket Association Stadium, Dharamsala. Notably, Ashwin will become the 14^th Indian player to achieve the landmark and is eagerly looking forward to his milestone Test.

Ever since Ashwin made his debut in 2011 against West Indies, his career has been full of ups and downs as he fought through the challenges to become a better cricketer over a period of time. Recently, he opened up on the learnings he’s had from his life and revealed a famous dialogue by Superstar Rajnikanth which changed his entire perspective towards life.

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“Lot of my takes in life and sport comes from movies. In one movie, Rajni (Rajnikanth) actually goes on to say this dialogue, he says, ‘When you know the death date, your living time becomes hell.’ We all know that we all have a marked death date but we all live very happily, we want to live the moment and we want to express ourselves because we all believe, we’re immortal for a very long time,” said Ashwin in a video released by BCCI.

“But the moment you know there’s finite nature to it. You start defending that finite nature. You don’t start living that finite space and I found that very deep. And then when you understand it, then when you’re able to put thought to it. It opens up a new cauldron for you, it kind of pushes the bar even more. You see, you know and I think that’s how I shed massive insecurities in my life,” he added.

Ashwin one five-wicket haul away from surpassing Kumble

Notably, the off-spinner recently completed the landmark of 500 Test scalps and became the second-fastest bowler to achieve the feat, completing it in just 98 matches. The Chennai-born cricketer is considered one of the most diligent students of the sport as he constantly analyses his game to stay one step ahead of batters.

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Meanwhile, during his 100^th Test, another major landmark awaits the off-spinner as he needs just one five-wicket haul to surpass Anil Kumble's tally of 35 fifers and register the most fifers for India in the longest format. If Ashwin manages to achieve the feat he also get level with Sir Richard Hadlee to have the third most number of fifers in Test history (36) after Shane Warne (37) and Muttiah Muralidaran (67).