Ravichandran Ashwin’s I Have the Streets: A tale of kutti cricket paints the bigger picture

David Frith has a delightful description of the unorthodox Australian spinner Jack Iverson’s bowling action: “He flicked the ball as if someone were throwing away a burnt-out cigarette.” Iverson held the ball between a bent middle finger and thumb and spun it from the start. He had worked on it with a table tennis ball.

Decades later, Ravichandran Ashwin in Chennai learned to throw a similar ball with a tennis ball and made it go the other way. He called it the Soft drink ball “because of the clicking sound the thumb and middle finger make,” he writes in a delightful memoir, I have the streets. Ashwin notes that some Sri Lankans, including orthodox left-hander Rangana Herath, throw that ball. It is later called the carrom ball.

It is unusual for an international bowler to experiment with deliveries so far into his career — but Ashwin continues to do so. One possible reason could be, as he says with great self-awareness in another context: “When it comes to cricket, I’m basically questions.”

It all started on the streets of Chennai, and a team called RUCA (Ramakrishnapuram Underarm Cricket Association). It says something about the kind of person Ashwin is that he has brief bios of his teammates at RUCA. It includes a player who calls himself Peter Siddle, but is known as Peter Schedule because “we have to clear our schedules when he bowls.” He once sent a 28-ball over.

No one has captured Chennai cricket from the inside out like Ashwin has (with the help of cricket writer Sidharth Monga). The passion, the madness, the humour, the friendships, the self-belief, that combination of narrow-mindedness and world-weariness that is unique.

I lived in Chennai in the 80s, where I both covered and played, and I recognise this charming mix. Nicknames came easily. There was a bowler called ‘Tyte’ because he came in as the fast bowler Frank Tyson but bowled as the spinner Gupte. If Soft drink is now common usage, then it was ‘ arakozhi‘, to describe a stroke that is neither forward nor backward and a literal translation of half cock describing it.

“When I lose something in life,” Ashwin writes, “when I see no other light, I turn to this cricket in our street with a few of my best friends. Everything changes, but not the joy I experience when I play here.”

There is more to the book, of course. The medical issues, the falling in love, the relationships with fellow players and the many arguments that come naturally to a confident man. When he was told after his first IPL contract that he would now be rubbing shoulders with the likes of Dhoni, Muttiah Muralitharan and Matthew Hayden, Ashwin thought to himself, “I’m not here to rub shoulders. I’m here to show that I belong here.”

On the other hand, he soon discovers: “One place I don’t belong is at the IPL after-match parties.” A delicious mix of confident and reserved. Another mix that reflects Chennai cricket.