On 30 December 2014, after securing India an honourable draw in the Boxing Day Test with a crisp unbeaten 24, skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni attended a routine press conference at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG). Minutes after he left the room came a press release from the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), confirming Dhoni’s retirement from Test cricket with ‘immediate effect’. One Test still remained to be played in the series, the Dhoni call to move on came out of nowhere, suddenly and without warning. There had been no indication during his interaction with the media that he had just made a momentous decision, that an era in Indian cricket had ended quietly.

Also read: Full text of Ashwin’s retirement announcement

Dhoni’s batting partner when the draw was secured a decade back was an off-spinner who had grown under his captaincy, a one-time top-order batter who was well on his way to establishing himself as one of his country’s greatest match-winners. On Wednesday (December 18), R Ashwin followed in his first Test captain’s footsteps, announcing his retirement from international cricket mid-series, though thankfully, it wasn’t through a missive from the game’s governing body in the country.

Not the first-choice spinner now

In some ways, this retirement was coming, though few expected it during the middle of a series, with two Tests still to play. Despite his successes against England at the start of the year, and the Player of the Series award against Bangladesh during the home series in September-October, Ashwin hasn’t looked the same potent, incisive force as ever. The fact that he was out-bowled in Pune and Mumbai against New Zealand by Washington Sundar, his off-spinning Tamil Nadu teammate, wouldn’t have been lost on the 38-year-old, who must have realised that while he wasn’t the team’s obvious first-choice spinner overseas anymore, he might not necessarily be the first second-choice spinner either.

Also read: Who said what on Ashwin’s retirement

Many might feel Ashwin deserved a better farewell, that he should have bowed out on the field rather than in a press conference room, but the call to retire now is his own and as captain Rohit Sharma pointed out, Ashwin has earned the right to decide when and how to go out. His fans, and there are millions of them – which is a great accomplishment in a batter-driven country – would have loved to have seen him walk off the field, leading his colleagues back into the hut, hand raised in acknowledgement of the massive support and appreciation, but that won’t be the case now. Quiet farewells too do tend to stick in memory, not just the grand sendoffs of the kind Sachin Tendulkar received at the Wankhede in November 2013.

Also read: Exclusive: EAS Prasanna on Ashwin’s retirement

To call Ashwin the Tendulkar of Indian bowling will be an exaggeration, but he wasn’t any less committed or driven than the little big man from Mumbai. To him, it wasn’t just the destination that excited and thrilled; he was invested in the journey, in the process of learning and unlearning and then relearning. He revelled in adding new tricks to his repertoire, he loved getting in a scrap – cricketing and verbal – with the best in the opposition and he took pleasure in testing his wares against the best batters of his era, the likes of Steve Smith and Kane Williamson and Joe Root.

Ashwin’s extraordinary numbers

Ashwin was a loud voice in the dressing room – the loudest, many of his teammates will say – because he always had an opinion or three on every subject. He loved to get in the ear of his teammates, going to the bowler with a word of advice here, a nugget of information there. His restless and constantly active mind looked for solutions to problems real and imagined and while his teammates might not always have been on the same wavelength and found his thought process too complicated, they knew that he merited attention because of his astute reading of the game and his problem-solving proficiency that was an offshoot both of his educational background and his propensity to keep thinking about the game and his craft.

Also read: Ashwin’s records and India career in numbers

To snare 537 wickets in 106 Tests, to take five wickets in a Test innings 37 times, to sign off with a bowling average of 24.00 – these are extraordinary numbers. They elevate the owner of these stats to a special category, to the very top of the list of greats. Ashwin didn’t just flirt with greatness, he truly embraced it just as it embraced him and his quest for excellence, his obsession with perfection. He might have driven his coaches crazy with his constant questions and theories, but they will be the first to admit that just like he loved getting out of his comfort zone, he forced them too out of their own and compelled them to look at the game through a different prism.

Ashwin has been a bit player in white-ball internationals for the last seven and a half years but for the preceding period of that same length, he was quite the wizard in limited-overs play. It was under Dhoni that he broke through on the back of his exploits for Chennai Super Kings (CSK) – he had already played a lot of first-class cricket for Tamil Nadu but it was the IPL that thrust him into the limelight – and he immediately made a mark, bowling in the Powerplay when the field restrictions were the most stringent with confidence and aplomb and handling even the death overs with dexterity. While it was Harbhajan Singh who was India’s lead off-spinner during their charge to the 50-over World Cup title at home in 2011, Ashwin had taken over that role by the time of the Champions Trophy in England two years later.

Gifted batter

Dhoni had so much confidence in him that when England needed 19 for victory in the last over of the final of that tournament, reduced to 20 overs a side due to rain, in Birmingham, he tossed the ball to his trusted lieutenant. Ashwin didn’t disappoint, bowling his side to the title by conceding just nine. It was potentially his finest white-ball hour, though it was the same Champions Trophy in the same country four years later that almost spelt the end of his 50-over career.

A wonderfully gifted batter with a great eye and lovely hands, Ashwin boasts six Test centuries – more than several top-order practitioners and will go down as among the premier all-rounders of his time in the five-day game. India will miss his towering presence, Rohit will miss his wisdom and chirp and batters will miss the opportunity to test themselves against one of the all-time greats. But while Ashwin might be lost to international cricket, he won’t go too far away from the sport. Not for a long, long time.