I need to understand what amount of effort and what sort of load will suit me, asserts Ravichandran Ashwin

Coming back to competitive cricket for his club - MRC(A) in TNCA 1st division, Ashwin took four wickets and scored a brilliant 51 in two matches. Last year was an up and down year for the Tamil Nadu all-rounder as he managed to pick up 38 wickets in 10 tests in spite of being injured at crucial moments.

Ashwin was a changed bowler with respect to the performances in the overseas tours last year but being absent at crucial moments for the team was something that hurt the 32-year-old cricketer.

“It’s unfortunate that I sustained back-to-back injuries when I was bowling really well on overseas tours. It’s frustrating but you have to move forward. Now, I am almost back to being 100 per cent fit. I haven’t played back-to-back games for a while. So it’s crucial for me to go through the grind. Now that I am playing in only one format, it is important for me to get some game time and also train," Ashwin told TOI.

“In terms of action, I want to get the best result as much as possible. But now I want to put lesser load on my body because it’s not easy to come back from an abductor injury and abdomen tear. I need to understand what amount of effort and what sort of loading will suit me. Wrist positions are the culmination of you putting more body into the balls. So I need to know how much side-on I can go, how much of hyper-extension I can give… So I need to balance everything out. That’s why I have to train smartly if I have to play a fair amount of games and bowl a number of overs.”

Ashwin last featured in the playing XI for India in a limited-overs game back in 2017 but he is still ready to take any opportunity that comes his way. The offie has now set a goal of playing back-to-back games and manage the workload on his body.

“Injuries aren’t anything which you can hold against a particular player. I do my best in preparation. Whenever I had undergone a fitness test or Yo Yo test, I have always been at the top of the list. But in certain games, my body probably wasn’t listening to me. It probably didn’t have a voice to communicate with me. I didn’t know when to step up the gas and when to pull the gas back. The injury had come and I had to deal with it in a certain way. My ultimate goal now is to play games back to back. To an extent it is also about workload management,” the Tamil Nadu all-rounder explained.