File photo of Ravichandran Ashwin wife Prithi Narayanan© BCCI
Ravichandran Ashwin is not only a spin great. But he is a thinker. A strategist. A motivator. In his early days. The young Ashwin was one bowlers who never shied away from trying out variations in his bowling. so much so that even the great MS Dhoni had to ask him to reply more on his stock delivery. Ashwin went on to become one of the greatest spinners in the history of Indian cricket. The amount of research that he did in decoding a batter’s technique is insane.
In fact, this one time when Ashwin was trying to understand the nuances of Steve Smtih’s batting technique, he got so involved, that his wife Prithi was concerned. The former India star, who retired recently, said that Prithi wouldn’t have been faulted for thinking he had a ‘man crush’ on Steve Smith.
“I got him out him in Australia. I don’t know how many times I watched Steve Smith bat, I can’t even remember. My wife was in the room, my kids were in the room. I don’t think I saw them properly at all for a few days. Like I kept zooming in on something, my wife watched from behind and said ‘what the hell are you watching? Why you going so close on Steve Smith? Do you have like a…’. I think she was concerned and rightly so. I wouldn’t have faulted her if she thought I had a man crush on him,” Ashwin said at the AWS AI Conclave 2025 in Bengaluru.
“I went so close. I was actually zooming in on his hands. I genuinely needed more people or more data or more intervention to help me out with that but I didn’t have it.”
Former India all-rounder Ravichandran Ashwin recently took a dig at England’s poor batting performance in the T20I series and even compared it to driving in Bengaluru’s traffic.
Ashwin stated that the 2022 T20 World Cup champions need to understand the pitch conditions rather than always playing their attacking game.
“England has played incomplete cricket. They made a series of mistakes. When you play in India, you can’t play in one tempo. If you drive in Bengaluru traffic, you can’t always be in the fourth gear. It’s the same logic here. Sometimes, you can’t even go to the fourth gear in Bengaluru (laughs),” Ashwin said on his YouTube channel.
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