Ravichandran Ashwin fought hard to hold back his tears. Unlike the ball from his hand or the words from his mouth, he was not ready to let his emotions flow.
His eyes and the shy smile throughout, however, narrated the entire story. His wife Prithi had a similar expression. Ashwin’s two daughters, too young to understand the enormity of the occasion, were giggling, doing their best to stand still as India head coach Rahul Dravid delivered an emotional speech, summing up Ashwin’s journey.
It’s not easy. How do you do justice to a cricketer like Ashwin in a speech of a couple of minutes? Dravid did his best. He has developed quite a reputation of sorts as a speaker in the Indian dressing room. His speech while handing over the Test cap to Akash Deep in Ranchi was a sight to behold.
Here too, Dravid’s words were enough to set the butterflies fly in Ashwin’s stomach.
There have been many special occasions in Ashwin’s glittering cricket career – two in this series itself when he became the world’s second-fastest cricketer to take 500 Test wickets and then when he beat Anil Kumble to become the highest wicket-taker in Test matches played in India – but this would perhaps have a different space in the great off-spinner’s career. It’s his 100th Test after all. He became the 14th Indian cricketer to achieve the special century in this format.
The BCCI presented a special 100th Test cap to Ashwin. It was handed over by Dravid after he finished his speech. Ashwin collected the cap kept in a glass cabinet and immediately handed it over to his daughter.