Ravichandran Ashwin - Interesting Facts, Trivia, And Records About 'Ash'

Ravichandran Ashwin, who celebrates his birthday today (17th September), comes on the list of best all-time great spinners in cricket history. Ashwin is a nerdy Tamilian who loves to play with angles to get the better of opposition batters. 

Here are some interesting facts, trivia, and records about R Ashwin:

1) Ravichandran Ashwin was born in 1986 in Tamil Nadu. He did his schooling at Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan and St. Bede's Anglo Indian Higher Secondary School. St Bede was where Ashwin developed his skills under the coaching of C.K. Vijay and Chandra. He also has a Btech degree in IT. 

2) Ashwin's father, Ravichandran, worked at Southern Railways. He was a fast bowler and played club cricket at Egmore Excelsiors - the same club where his son also started playing. 

3) Ashwin used to be an opening batter, however, a serious pelvic injury at the age of 14 made his batting take a backseat. After almost ten months of break, Ashwin found his opening slot taken over which is when his mother asked him to try bowling spin. 

4) R Ashwin made his T20I debut along with Virat Kohli and Naman Ojha in 2010 against Zimbabwe. Ojha and Pankaj Singh also partnered him in his ODI debut in the same year. Ashwin and Umesh Yadav made their test debut together in 2011. 

5) Sachin Tendulkar's last Test win against West Indies was set up by R Ashwin and Rohit Sharma's 7th wicket partnership of 280 runs - the highest by an Indian pair. 

6) Ashwin is the joint-fastest to double of 50 test wickets and 500 runs along with Ian Botham and Jack Gregory. 

7) Ashwin is the fastest to take 50, 100, 150, 200, 250, 300, 350, 400 test wickets in history in terms of the number of innings taken. 

8) R Ashwin is the only bowler to dismiss Kumar Sangakarra in four consecutive innings. This feat came in the last test series of the Sri Lankan legend in 2015. Ashwin was the last bowler to dismiss Sangakarra in tests. 

9) Ashwin is an Arjuna Award recipient. He got conferred with the prestigious award in 2014. He was the BCCI's international cricketer of the year in 2012-13. In 2016, Ashwin was named ICC cricketer of the year and Test cricketer of the year. 

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10) Ravichandran Ashwin has so far played 79 tests in which he has taken 413 wickets and made 2656 runs. Ashwin has 150 wickets in 111 ODIs, and 52 wickets in 46 T20Is. The off-spinner has 655 wickets to his name in first-class cricket and has scored 4597 runs in 135 matches.