The legendary Indian off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin reflected on some of the crucial aspects of life where he clearly opined that he would rather fail than playing safe whether its life or cricket. The cricketer also turned into an author and is currently enjoying the success of his newly released book “I Have The Streets: A Kutti Cricket Story”. The book is co-authored by Sidharth Monga and published by Penguin Random House. The book gives an insight about Ashwin’s life till 2011 and presents his thoughts to the audience.

“I am living my life, that’s it. I am not thinking about accomplishing ‘A’, ‘B’ or ‘C’ . I am staying in the moment. I am a creative person in general, and if I feel I want to do something, I will go ahead and do it. right or wrong, is something that I will assimilate later,” Ashwin told PTI in an exclusive interview.

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Ashwin highlights about his insecurities and how he overcame it

Ashwin talks about his insecure side as a child and the way he overcame it as he grew. His journey to become the top spinner for Team India was full of ups and downs but he never let the “outside noise” disturb his peace and game.

“I’m not insecure at all. I would rather fail in life than be absolutely safe. That’s my character. I don’t have the common insecurities that people have,” he asserts with the same clarity with which he decodes complex cricket laws in his social media feeds, which don’t take long to become viral trends.

“Breaking away from my insecurity gave me a great insight into how I can exploit somebody else’s insecurity. And that’s how I see cricket or life in general,” he explained

‘COVID gave me a chance to take a break’ says Ashwin

During COVID everyone was struggling and that’s the time when he introspected his approach towards life and realised he just has one chance to do what he wanted, that’s when he came out with a youtube channel which now has 1.5 million subscribers.

“The time that I have is pretty limited. I do plan but for me it’s about living life. I felt cricket took away a lot of my time since 2010 but COVID gave me a chance to take a break, and you know, assess where I was,” he recalls.

“It has given me wings over the last four years to be able to express myself, expand my creativity zones and so on and so forth”

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Ashwin’s visit to a casino taught time a great life lesson

“If you go to the Casino, thinking of how much money you will make, you will pretty much end up without a rupee. But when you go with the intention of having fun and wanting to lose the money that you have, you always go back a much richer person. It was actually a big learning experience,” he explains.

Looking back at the hardships and painful times

“I think hurting someone is an immensely painful journey. But if tomorrow I do write about hurtful instances of mine then it’s because people who are on the other side, will have hurt me. They are obviously gonna feel bad about it, because nobody intentionally hurts you,” he says, underscoring his belief in the inherent goodness of individuals.

“Look, people who give you an opportunity to learn harsh lessons in life are Gurus in my book. I didn’t want to go and confront the guy. But for me it is an incident, it happened, and it fuelled the fire in me.

“I wanted to become a better person. I wanted to become a better cricketer. I am thankful for the person who did that to me, because I think in some way or the other he fuelled my desire to do well,” he says.

“It’s not. See a lot of people come to me and say, what goes around comes around. The world is a very fair place, it’s not. It can be very unfair on a lot of people. When you win, somebody else loses,” he points out, the clarity of thought shining through once again much like his eyes, which light up at the first sight of a batter’s vulnerability.