New Delhi: Ace India off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin has revealed the person from whom he learnt the skills to bowl the carrom ball — a delivery through which he has bamboozled many batsmen across formats.
Ashwin said it was a person named SK who used to bowl the delivery with proper action and extract drift, that too with a tennis ball when they used to play on the streets of Chennai.
“The first time I went to play a tennis ball game, I was batting. There was this guy who was bowling with a proper action, getting beautiful drift and getting the ball to go nicely out and in. Till today I can’t find where the guy is but I haven’t seen a better bowler who can bowl both in and out than him in my life. His name is SK. He was the one from whom I learnt that ball,” Ashwin said on a Cricbuzz show.
“Basically he was the one who made me look like an absolute idiot on that particular day. I was a big thing around the tennis ball circuit as a batsman then, so I said I need to learn from this guy. So I used to go every morning, and he used to come and teach me for about 10-15 days,” he added.
Ashwin, who has picked 362 wickets in 70 Tests, is part of the India squad for the two-Test series against New Zealand which gets underway in Wellington on February 21.
–IANS