India’s third-highest Test wicket-taker Ravichandran Ashwin says that he nearly quit several times be-tween 2018 and 2020 due to injury and because he did not “feel backed”. “I contemplated retirement for a lot of reasons,” the star spinner told ESPN Cricinfo. “I felt like people were not sensitive enough to my injuries.
I felt like a lot of people were backed, why not me? I have done no less.” The 35-year-old suffered a series of injuries, in-cluding to his knee and abdomen.
“I felt I was not being able to be excellent and felt I needed a shoul-der to lean on,” he said ahead of India’s first Test against South Africa on Sunday. “It was not happening. I thought maybe I should try to find something else and be excellent at that.—AP
