Nobody wants to be a bowler, because it’s labour class: Ravichandran Ashwin

There is absolutely no doubt that Ravichandran Ashwin will go down as one of the best spinners to have played the game in the history of Indian cricket. The off-spinner from Tamil Nadu made his international debut in 2010 in an ODI in Zimbabwe. He soon made his T20I debut as well. However, it took him more than a year to get his Test cap.

However, since then, he’s had his ups and downs, but he has remained one of India’s premier spinners, especially in Test cricket. Until mid-2017, he was also India’s first-choice white-ball spinner. Ashwin has played international cricket for nine years and has picked up over 550 wickets across all formats. Not only does he have so many wickets to his name, but he has also scored over 3000 runs in international cricket and has four Test hundreds.

“Batting is first-class or business-class while bowling is labor class”

It is little known fact that Ashwin started off as an opening batsman. He used to bat in the top order for his club in junior cricket. But he soon turned into a bowler, an off-spinner and hasn’t looked back since. He made his debut for Tamil Nadu in all three formats in the 2006-07 season and within three years, he made his India debut.

On a YouTube talk-show named Breakfast with Champions, Ravichandran Ashwin revealed quite a few things. He revealed that Anil Kumble once said to him about how his life went in proving people wrong and Ashwin’s journey and motivation also came from similar ideologies. Ashwin feels he wanted people to realize it’s good to be a bowler. He also tagged batsmen as ‘business or first class people’ whereas he compared bowlers to ‘labour class’.

“Once I embarked on this journey and started becoming the bowler I am, I realized that I had to prove it to people that it’s good to be a bowler. I constantly feel that nobody wants to be a bowler because it’s labour-class and batting is first-class or business class. You want to inspire people picking up the ball,” Ashwin said during the interview with Gaurav Kapur.