Ravichandran Ashwin is the true spin doctor of Chennai Super Kings

Ravichandran Ashwin believes there is always room for improvement, so he is constantly searching to find an advantage. PUNIT PARANJPE / AFP

Ahead of the seventh season of the Indian Premier League, The National looks at each of the eight franchises who will be playing in the UAE. Our seventh instalment: Chennai Super Kings.

Game changer

Long-sleeved shirts have plenty of redeeming features. They are ideal when worn in the Indian Premier League, of course, on account of the fact you can fit at least three more sponsor's logos on them. And, if you listen to Ravichandran Ashwin, extending the length of the playing jersey beyond the elbow can have a distinct competitive advantage, too.

Allowing for more flexion, with the shirt presumably impairing an exact reading on the degree of straightening, allows for more revolutions on the ball, and thus more spin. So goes the theory, anyway.

“I just wanted to see if I can get more revs on the ball if I could do little bit with my elbow, as much as there is,” Ashwin said during the recently concluded World Twenty20.

“That’s what it was all about. I don’t know, you can tend to get a lot of advantage doing all these things.

“So why should I lag behind in the advantage when somebody else is getting a competitive edge?”

Setting aside the morality issues behind a bowler actively admitting the inserting of a kink in their bowling action, the basic fact Ashwin is so adaptable is remarkable.

He became the fastest player to 100 Test wickets in 80 years with his old method, topped the ICC rankings for all-rounders in Tests and was named India’s international cricketer of the year in 2013.

All that after establishing his credentials in the 2010 edition of the IPL, when he became a fixture in the Chennai Super Kings' title-winning side while competing for a spinner's berth with the great Muttiah Muralitharan.

All with the old method.

It is a little like Tiger Woods entirely revising his golf swing – twice – despite an unprecedented domination of his sport the first way.

Ashwin may be a fair way from being cricket’s answer to Woods, but he clearly has a passion for self-improvement and the desire to pursue perfection. The fact he theorises so deeply on his art is no surprise.

As a voracious student of the game, he is the IPL’s mad professor.

“I won’t say if nerd is the right term, but I’m a big, big cricket fanatic,” he said in an interview with espncricinfo.com.

“I just cannot stop thinking, talking cricket. I do carry notebooks and make notes to look at improving and developing my own game.”

Given the valuable currency of slow-bowling in 20-over cricket, Chennai are enviably stocked with Ashwin, Samuel Badree and Ravindra Jadeja in their ranks.

The Super Kings are well placed to extend their record as the winningest side in the short history of the IPL.

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