Ravichandran Ashwin breathed an early reprieve after recovering from a shoulder injury that he sustained in the opening game of Delhi Capitals after just bowling a solitary over. While trying to field, he hurt his shoulder in the process and missed the next two games. However, he showed excellent resilience to recover from that injury and come up on top.
He pulled off considerable bowling time against Kolkata Knightriders and Royal Challengers Bangalore, belting out pretty economical spells and even claimed the prized scalp of Devdutt Padikkal after the youngster was soaring high in confidence, coming on the back of two consecutive half-centuries.
On October 5th, the game against Bangalore saw Ravi Ashwin making a change to his jersey number of ‘999’ where the off-spinner concealed a ‘9’ from the back of his jersey. Delhi Capitals’ primary spinner, Amit Mishra was ruled out of IPL 2020 due to an injury and he used to don on the jersey number of 99 on his back.
After Mishra was ruled out, Ashwin decided to cover one nine on his back and his current jersey number reads 99. Notably, he dons on jersey number 99 for India.
Former Indian women’s cricketer, Snehal Pradhan asked Ashwin about covering the ‘9’ on his jersey. She tweeted, “@ashwinravi99 Can you tell us why you’ve covered up one 9 on your shirt? And perhaps why you wear 999 to begin with?”
Ravichandran Ashwin’s return:
In the game against RCB, Ashwin conceded 26 runs from his regular quota of four overs that also saw him picking up the crucial wicket of Devdutt Padikkal. It was an important wicket because young Padikkal was riding high on panache, carving some exquisite strokes until then, and came to this game riding on the back of three half-centuries.
The Capitals prised out a comfortable victory by an emphatic margin of 59 runs and also climbed to the top of the table with four victories from five games. Rabada has so far been the best of their bowing lot, in fact, he has been the best bowler in IPL 2020 with 12 wickets in his repertoire.
Their next game will against Rajasthan Royals at Sharjah, a ground where Royals seemed invincible in their previous two matches.
