NZ Spinner Adithya Ashok Sports A Rajnikanth Tattoo

NEW DELHI-New Zealand’s Vellore-born leg-spinner Adithya Ashok says he is excited to test his bowling against India batting greats Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma in the upcoming three-game ODI series starting in Vadodara on January 11.

Ashok, 23, was born in Vellore, Tamil Nadu, before moving to Auckland, New Zealand, at age four.

He sports the ‘En vazhi thani vazhi’ (My way is a unique way) tattoo on his bowling arm, which was a famous punchline from superstar Rajinikanth in his movie ‘Padayappa’. It’s a tribute to the actor, as well as to Adithya’s late grandfather, with whom he watched the movie before his demise.

His last visit to India was for honing his bowling skills in a two-week spin camp at the CSK Academy in Chennai under lead coach Sriram Krishnamurthy, and he hopes to use that knowledge to the fullest when bowling to Kohli and Rohit.

The leg-spinner has played two ODIs and a T20I, and with New Zealand not having many regulars in the 50-over series, it offers Ashok the chance to bowl to two of cricket’s modern-day legendary batters.

“It’s a very exciting opportunity and challenge to play against those guys and, again, test yourself against people that are considered great and definitely are great. The things that they’ve done for the game and the things that they’ve achieved across their careers have been pretty phenomenal. So, again, for myself to go and potentially play against them and go out there and learn and try and understand and touch and feel greatness is really exciting for me,” said Ashok.

Rather than viewing the series as pressure-laden, Ashok is focused on incremental improvement and soaking in the learning experience of bowling in India. “The way that I’ve tried to go about things is being really process driven and understanding that if I can go away from this series and have learnt new methods or learnt about myself as a cricketer and learnt about myself as a person and just really enjoyed the experience, I think that puts me in a richer position than anything else.

Ashok, who represented New Zealand in the 2020 Under-19 World Cup in South Africa, has role models in Australia’s leg-spin great Shane Warne and fellow countryman Ish Sodhi. He also credits former national spinners, his mentor Tarun Nethula, and Paul Wiseman, who is the talent identification manager in New Zealand Cricket, as vital figures in his life, especially in recovering from a back surgery done by Rowan Schouten, who operated on pacers Jasprit Bumrah, Prasidh Krishna, and Mayank Yadav.

The duo also worked on the technical changes around Ashok’s bowling action to prevent stress on his lower back. “When I’m rotating, making sure that I’m not rotating from a lumbar extension position, which I think caused a bit of that stress along that joint and those vertebrae. So, those two have been really, really important and continue to be really important,” he said. (IANS)