Why Kohli, Khawaja and other ageing greats should be worried by Ashwin’s sudden retirement

When Ravichandran Ashwin bowled India to victory in Dharamsala earlier this year, no one would have believed he’d have just six Tests remaining in his illustrious career.

As he had done for the best part of a decade, in March Ashwin spun webs around England, who, even with BazBall and all, proved to have no answers for the greatest off-spinner India has produced.

The Ashwin we saw against England looked like he still had a few years of Test cricket left in him. He would pick up just one more five-wicket haul in international cricket before surprising everyone with his retirement after the drawn Gabba Test against Australia this week.

Although the end to Ashwin’s career appears to have come on his own terms, it comes as a cautionary tale to several of his teammates.

The message is this — the end is almost always closer than you think it is.

Finding the right time to retire is something every great grapples with in every sport. Almost all of them fail to find the fairytale ending they so desperately crave.

For each hero’s farewell the likes of Shane Warne and Sachin Tendulkar received from their adoring fans, there are countless legends in cricket and other sports who haven’t quite nailed the landing to end their respective careers.

Michael Jordan, who is widely considered one of the best athletes ever, seemingly had the perfect end to his basketball career with the Chicago Bulls when he drained a mid-range jumper with seconds remaining to put the Utah Jazz to bed in the 1998 NBA Finals. The win gave Jordan a perfect 6-0 record in NBA Finals and he rode off into the sunset as the undisputed GOAT.

Jordan scuppered his perfect landing by coming out of retirement a few years later for a couple of forgettable seasons with the Washington Wizards. He never made it back to the play-offs, let alone the NBA Finals. Even the best of the best struggle to know when enough is truly enough.

You cannot blame them, either.

The top 1 per cent of athletes get to that upper echelon by consistently defying everything and everyone around them. Tell them there is a mountain they cannot scale, and they’ll wave to you after hiking to the summit.

However, this mentality results in a lot of them finding out the same thing the hard way at the tail end of their careers — Father Time is undefeated.

Ashwin has proven himself to be one of India’s most ruthless competitors over his 14-year international career. His constant dances with the controversial Mankad rule over the journey prove he’ll stop at nothing to win.

All of it makes his decision to retire in the middle of what is the pinnacle Test series for an Indian player baffling, particularly with the series on the line.

Ashwin’s mid-series retirement isn’t without precedent from an Indian perspective. MS Dhoni, who was captain at the time, retired immediately after India drew against Australia at the MCG a decade ago, similarly stunning everyone in the Indian camp.

The major difference? India had already lost that series. This time around, the Border-Gavaskar Trophy is well and truly up for grabs and at least one of the two venues left for India to play at are poised to be spin-friendly. The tourists could well have played both Ashwin and his long-time running mate Ravindra Jadeja in the series finale at the SCG.

Incredibly, Ashwin has already landed back home in India to a hero’s welcome less than 24 hours after his retirement announcement.

Ashwin is widely known as one of the most astute thinkers cricket has to offer. Even if he wasn’t in the playing XI, having him around would have been invaluable, particularly for a young spinner like Washington Sundar, who was somewhat surprisingly selected over him in the line-up for the Perth Test.

That Ashwin has immediately departed Australia says a lot about the state of the relationship between India’s upper management and the veteran spinner.

Ashwin called himself a part of “the last bunch of OGs” in the Indian side in his retirement announcement in Brisbane, and the focus now shifts to the performances of the remaining trio — captain Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli and Jadeja.

Kohli has bought himself some time courtesy of the century he scored in the series opener, but he’s just got to leave balls outside off stump alone. The former skipper has enough capital to decide when he wants to walk away, but his Test record in the last five years is telling. It is a record that probably sees him dropped from the Test side if his name isn’t Virat Kohli.

Jadeja may have been disappointing with the ball in Brisbane, going wicketless, but his fighting 77 was crucial to India avoiding the follow-on — and perhaps an innings loss. With Ashwin gone, his experience and all-round ability become even more crucial. He is also the youngest of the “OGs”.

Sharma is the one who is closest to being in the firing line. His batting average in Australia is now a paltry 26.68, right in line with his average of 26.39 for the calendar year.

Making things worse for Sharma is the fact that his replacement at the top of the order, KL Rahul, has looked like India’s most assured batter through the first three Tests. Removing him from the opening slot in favour of the stuttering skipper might make things worse for an already shaky batting line-up.

Sharma is aware of his form slump and said “whatever the best thing for the team to do, we will do” after the Brisbane Test. What if that is to replace him in the XI?

Could India fare much worse by giving Sarfaraz Khan a run in Sharma’s number six spot for one or more of the final two Tests?

The flip side to greats retiring is the impact their departures have on the team they leave behind. The timing is crucial not only for the player but for the team as well. Teams generally like to avoid a bunch of all-timers retiring in close proximity with one another. Ideally, there are like-for-like replacements waiting in the wings, but this is not always the case.

The end to Ashwin’s career appears to have been hastened by the arrival of Washington, while Kuldeep Yadav has enjoyed his best calendar year as a Test bowler in 2024. Axar Patel is another all-round spin option in the Jadeja mould that India will turn to with increasing regularity in the coming years.

Simply put, India’s spin department is well-stocked both now and for the years to come.

It will be a different story when Kohli and Sharma’s time runs out. They aren’t under as much pressure as their numbers would otherwise invite simply because the next generation doesn’t appear to quite be ready just yet. Can the likes of Sarfaraz, Devdutt Padikkal, Abhimanyu Easwaran, Dhruv Jurel and others on the fringes of the Test side step up in the near future?

India’s batting conundrum is similar to the one that faces Australia, whose top order remains woefully out of form.

Steve Smith broke out of his slump with a much-needed century in Brisbane, but questions still remain over the other members of Australia’s top four — Usman Khawaja, Nathan McSweeney and Marnus Labuschagne.

To put the struggles of Australia’s top three into perspective, Australia’s number eight, Mitchell Starc, boasts a higher batting average than Khawaja, McSweeney and Labuschagne so far through three Tests in this series.

McSweeney has been axed for the Boxing Day Test, and he would be justified in wondering how much more rope his more experienced fellow teammates at the top of the order would receive if that brutal call were indeed made.

The highly-touted Sam Konstas has joined Australia’s Test squad for the fourth Test and could well make his debut at the MCG at just 19 years of age. He would be Australia’s youngest Test debutant since a fresh-faced Pat Cummins tore South Africa to shreds at just 18 in 2011.

By picking McSweeney, who had barely opened at the first-class level, to partner Khawaja to start the series, the selectors have already shown their hand — they don’t trust the more experienced domestic openers such as Marcus Harris, Matt Renshaw and Cameron Bancroft, all players who have previously made Test appearances. A Konstas debut will make the trio wonder whether their futures lie as it pertains to the Test side.

Last summer’s farewell tour for David Warner, who only retired after the New Year’s Test in Sydney earlier this year, denied Bancroft a chance to return to the Test side while he was in red-hot form. When the opportunity came around this summer, Bancroft found himself woefully short of runs.

Australia is likely to have a similar problem in its fast bowling stocks in the coming years as well, with all three of Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Pat Cummins on the wrong side of 30, while their most obvious replacements, Scott Boland and Michael Neser, are also in the same age bracket.

As Hazlewood’s repeated injuries this summer have shown, Australia will need to pick its spots when it comes to the fast bowling triumvirate with increasing regularity in the next few years.

Starc and Cummins are going strong currently, but the history of fast bowlers shows that the end comes relatively quickly for them at the Test level unless your name is James Anderson.

It would be wise for Australia’s selectors to think a few summers ahead in terms of how — and more importantly when — to replace the trio. That is before we discuss the oldest of Australia’s bowlers, Nathan Lyon, who has looked strangely toothless so far against India.

Next summer’s home Ashes series has been touted as the perfect farewell for most of the mid-to-late-30s brigade in the Australian side. But Ashwin’s retirement should serve as a warning that not all of Australia’s veterans will make it that far.

Ashwin’s early exit will surely have his older teammates also questioning when their time might be up as well.

The alarm bells will also be ringing in the opposing dressing room, and rightly so.