Having to sit out of Tests eventually got to me, Ashwin tells Dravid

Mumbai, Aug 21 (PTI) Having to sit out of Test matches on away tours "eventually got to me", says Indian spin legend Ravichandran Ashwin of his abrupt international retirement in the middle of the last Border-Gavaskar Trophy in Australia.

Ashwin, only the second Indian bowler to have taken over 500 Test wickets after Anil Kumble, surprised everyone by announcing his retirement after the third Test in Brisbane last December.

"I was pretty old, I must admit. But going on tours, and having to just sit out (a) lot more, eventually got to me," Ashwin told former India captain and coach Rahul Dravid in a chat on his YouTube channel.

"I mean, not in terms of not wanting to contribute to the team, but you're thinking if I would rather be at home, spending time with children. They are also growing up, and what am I actually doing? So I just felt like okay... In my head, I always decided that I would retire at 34-35. But just the fact that I could not play a lot in between..." he added.

Ashwin, who made his Test debut in November 2011, took 383 wickets in India in 65 Tests and in 40 away matches, he grabbed another 150 wickets. He took four wickets in the only neutral Test -- the 2019-21 World Test Championship final against New Zealand in UK.

Meanwhile, Dravid said Rohit Sharma's ability to stay calm, care deeply about his team and communicate clearly his thoughts and ideas stood out for him, as the two became one of the most successful captain-coach pairings in the national team's history.

With Rohit and Dravid at the helm, the Indian team enjoyed a terrific run particularly in white-ball cricket as the side made it to the final of the ODI World Cup in 2023 and won the T20 World Cup the following year.

"It was really good. The thing with Rohit that I always felt was that he deeply cared about the team and he was, right from the first day, he was very clear about how he wanted to run the team and what was important to him," Dravid said.

"And that's really important in any relationship between a captain and a coach, especially the way I coach. I always like to believe that it should be the captain's team." "I've been a player, and I've been a captain as well, but a captain has to lead in terms of the direction he wants to go in, and you have to support him and help him in that," he added.

Dravid said Rohit was "very clear" about what he wanted from the team and how it should operate, adding that his experience also helped.

"You sometimes need to help a captain in terms of getting that clarity and understanding what is required," Dravid said.

"But with Rohit, I thought he was very clear about what he wanted from the team, how he wanted the environment to be, how he wanted the atmosphere to be, and how he wanted things to run," Dravid said.

"He had so much experience over the years, and that really helped. He was very clear on those things," he added.

Dravid said he understood the requirement was to create a comfortable environment for Rohit to operate.

"For me, it was just working with him on challenging him at times on certain things, but also just working with him to ensure that you know, he was able to be comfortable in that space," Dravid said.

"Because I knew once he was comfortable in that space, then he was going to perform and he was going to get everyone else to perform." Former India captain Dravid said being able to chat with Rohit on non-cricket matters also helped them as a pair.

"I just enjoyed sort of getting to know him as a person and chatting with him. There were a lot of times (during) our conversations, we were comfortable enough to be able to sit and have conversations with each other without having to talk only cricket," he said.

"It felt easy spending time in the evening with him to have a meal, you know, I wasn't forced or it wasn't like, 'oh, we have to convince it and have a meeting'," he added.

"Having seen him as an U-19 kid and given him his first gap as a cricketer to see how he grew as a person and as a leader was actually really nice," Dravid said. PTI DDV DDV AH AH