The Padma Shri Award was bestowed on Indian cricketer Ravichandran Ashwin on Monday by Indian President Droupadi Murmu at Rashtrapati Bhavan, after which Ashwin spoke about his retired life from international cricket. He stated that the first moment he thought about retirement was somewhat after the Test match whereby he scored a century while taking six wickets against Bangladesh in Chennai. But he kept that to himself until he finally candidly declared his retirement while in Australia and actually took a flight back home. Subsequently, he featured for Chennai Super Kings for IPL 2025.
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Ashwin said: “To be honest, I wanted to retire after my 100th Test. Then I thought, let me play in the home season since I was doing well, getting wickets, and making runs. It made sense to continue.” He mentioned that things turned when Australia didn’t go according to plan. It really hurt not to play first Test in Perth with Washington Sundar playing instead.
“It would be difficult to retire when you are doing so well,” he reflected. “So I played through the and we lost to New Zealand. After that, I started thinking about Australia. The last time I was in Australia was a good tour. And then I felt I was caught up in this loop again when I didn’t start in Perth,” he added.
Ashwin noticed that often people do not understand to what extent emotions affect happenings in athletes’ lives. They do not really care to consider that, for your emotions are unique only to you. He was thinking about all this, and he thought probably it was time for him to step down. He also revealed that he was thinking about retiring twice before – once during the 2023 home series against Australia and then after India’s monumental win over England.
He had a phenomenal career with India being part of the team that lifted the trophy during the 2011 ODI World Cup and 2013 Champions Trophy. Ashwin was indeed among India’s greatest match-winners with contributions such as 537 Test wickets, 6 hundreds, and a meaningful 3503 Test runs. In ODIs, he has had 156 wickets, and in T20Is, 72. He left the international scene but is still very much on the IPL 2025 with Chennai Super Kings, who bought him for Rs. 9 Crore in the auction.
