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As the Indian cricket team gets down to action against England in the fifth Test in Dharamsala, Ashwin achieved a huge personal milestone. The match is Ashwin’s 100th for the Indian Test team. In 99 Tests, Ashwin took 507 wickets at an average of 23.91, including 35 five-wicket hauls, with the best bowling figures of 7/59. Combine it with his tally of 3,309 runs in 140 innings at an average of 26.14, with five centuries and 14 fifties and he is one of the most successful all-rounders of the modern era.
Ahead of the start of the match, Ashwin’s wife Prithi penned an honest note on what it’s like to be married to an international cricketer.
“Since there was no dating in our pre-marriage life, he didn’t prepare me for married life. As soon as we got married, we were off to Kolkata to play a Test the next day against the West Indies. I wasn’t aware there would be so much media attention. I remember this instance when he was tying the wedding Thali (like a mangalsutra), all I could see was photographers around both of us. And we couldn’t spot the one we had hired for the wedding. It was the first taste of what it meant to be around a cricketer all the time,” Prithi Ashwin wrote in a column for The Indian Express.
“I don’t know how much of the fact that I love the game contributed to overcoming it. I know I love him but if I didn’t like what he was doing, would I have done what I’m doing today? I don’t have a problem putting him first. But I was very unsettled the first few years, not in the marriage but in how much this profession was taking away from what I could be building with him. First, it was surprise, then shock, then denial. Then it was pure misery. When we had children, I was sacrificing all our time. It took time to understand that if you want to succeed at the highest level, it always comes at a cost, either not spending time with his parents, or with his wife and children.”
Prithi went on to the explain how the game impacted Ashwin’s life and how the period during Covid changed their lives.
“This sport took over his life from the time he was seven and I took time to realise that sometimes they don’t know anything else. There is no fuel in the vehicle to put into another relationship or another presence in your life,” she wrote.
“It was Covid that really got us together. In a way, it was a blessing in disguise because we all suddenly realised that he is probably never going to play cricket again. So what is our life about? That’s probably eight-nine years into a marriage when we really lived together under a roof like a normal couple,” she added.
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