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'I Would Rather Fail Than Stay Safe..': R Ashwin Spills Beans On His Mamba Mentality

Ravichandran Ashwin (X.com)Ravichandran Ashwin (X.com)

India's premium wicket taker, Ravichandran Ashwin, has ticked all boxes on the checklist with his versatile personality from engineer to a cricketer to a popular youtuber and now an author too, there's so much that he has achieved. 

The 37-year-old off-spinner, one of the sharpest minds in international cricket right now, is also a refreshingly candid voice with 516 Test wickets lending considerable weight to his views.

Moreover, parallel processing or multi-tasking comes easy to R Ashwin, who would rather fail than play safe whether it's life or cricket.

He is currently enjoying the critical success of his book "I Have The Streets: A Kutti Cricket Story'. 

Co-authored by Sidharth Monga and published by Penguin Random House, it chronicles Ashwin's life till 2011 and also gives a peak into his mind, which enjoys probability analysis as much as decoding a difficult batter.

"I am living my life, that's it. I am not thinking about accomplishing 'A', 'B' or 'C' (targets). 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. (Whether it's) right or wrong, is something that I will assimilate later," Ashwin told PTI in an exclusive interview.

He has taken criticism on the chin and has responded with a bagful of wickets, refusing to let that "outside noise" disturb the equilibrium of his mind. And it is this system optimisation, as the engineer in him would say, which allows him to take risks, and not be afraid of failure.

"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,"

Breaking away from my insecurity (as a child) 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, letting out perhaps the secret of his understated aggression on the field.

(With PTI Inputs)