Ashwin says he would rather fail than play it safe in cricket and in life | News

“I live my life, that’s all. I don’t think about achieving ‘A’, ‘B’ or ‘C’ goals. I stay in the moment. I am a creative person in general, and if I feel like I want to do something, I do it. (Whether it is) right or wrong, is something I will assimilate later,” Ashwin told PTI in an exclusive interview.

However, he wasn’t always so brave. As a child, he had an insecure side, but he overcame it over time and realized that his fears paralyzed him.

Once he got over that, Ashwin says he became a bit unflappable and that has been evident in his growth as a cricketer. From playing carrom balls on the streets of Chennai as a child, his metamorphosis into India’s best bowler has been quite a journey.

He has taken the criticism seriously and responded with a bag full of loopholes, refusing to allow that “outside noise” to disturb the equilibrium of his mind. And it is this optimization of the system, as the engineer in him would say, that allows him to take risks and not be afraid of failure.

“I’m not insecure at all. I’d rather fail in life than be absolutely confident. That’s my personality. I don’t have the common insecurities that people have,” he says, as clearly as he deciphers the complex laws of cricket on his social media feeds, which quickly become viral trends.

“Getting over my insecurity (as a child) allowed me to better understand how I can exploit the insecurity of others. And that’s how I look at cricket or life in general,” he explained, perhaps revealing the secret to his low-key aggression on the field.

Returning to parallel processing, engineering jargon for running multiple calculations at the same time, Ashwin said the COVID crisis, during which almost everyone struggled with the fear of loss, was the moment he recalibrated his approach to life and realized that, in the end, he only had one chance to do what he wanted.

The YouTube channel came into being during the lockdown and its articulate opinions on cricket, the laws of cricket and cricketers now have over 1.5 million subscribers.

Not to be forgotten, like most people around him, Ashwin also battled the trauma of seeing his loved ones hospitalized due to the dreaded infection at that time.

“The time I have is quite limited. I make plans, but for me it’s about living life. I felt cricket was taking up a lot of my time since 2010 (his debut in India), but COVID gave me a chance to take a break and, you know, assess where I was,” he recalls.

“(The COVID-enforced break) has given me wings over the last four years to be able to express myself, expand my creative zones, etc.,” he says, referring to his success as a rare voice in Indian cricket.

According to him, it all comes down to not being afraid or having the ability to see the funny side of risks, something a visit to a casino in 2009 taught him.

“If you go to the casino thinking about how much money you’re going to win, you’re likely to end up broke. But if you go there with the intention of having fun and you’re willing to lose the money you have, you always come back a lot richer. It was actually a great learning experience,” he explains.

But that’s not your only point of reference for life lessons – you could just as easily take them from a movie, a web series or books.

Speaking of books, she knows that telling her story to the world carries risks.

It is not just a matter of revealing a previously unseen side of oneself to people who might unwittingly judge. There is also the danger of unwittingly hurting others when unpleasant experiences become public.

“I think hurting someone is an immensely painful process. But if tomorrow I write about painful situations that have hurt me, it will be because the people on the other side have hurt me. Obviously they will feel bad about it, because no one hurts you intentionally,” she says, underlining her belief in the inherent goodness of individuals.

That is why he prefers to see painful episodes as life lessons, tough but necessary to build a person. In his book, he details one such case when, during his time at Chennai Super Kings, a team official refused to entertain his request for a big ticket to the IPL in 2010, despite the fact that he had contributed significantly to the team’s success that season.

“Look, people who give you the opportunity to learn hard lessons in life are gurus in my book. I didn’t want to go and confront that guy. But for me it’s an incident, it happened and it fueled the fire inside me.

“I wanted to be a better person. I wanted to be a better cricketer. I’m grateful to the person who did that for me, because I think in one way or another it fueled my desire to do well,” he says.

That incident was also an important lesson to understand that the world is not a fair place.

“It’s not like that. A lot of people come to me and say that what you sow, you reap. The world is a very fair place, but it’s not. It can be very unfair to a lot of people. When you win, someone else loses,” he says, his clarity of thought shining once more, as do his eyes, which light up at seeing a batter’s vulnerability for the first time.