'I play with a smile now': Ashwin on handling pressure

R Ashwin during his 113 yesterday. Pic/PTI

R Ashwin on Friday said he has liberated himself from the clutches of external and internal pressure, and now he is just looking to play cricket "with a smile on face."

Ashwin made a back-on-the-wall hundred on the first day of the opening Test here against Bangladesh to rescue India from a precarious 144-6 in the company of an equally resolute Ravindra Jadeja.

The 38-year-old leveraged on that innings to drive home the point that he now only responds to pressure situations on a cricket field, unlike in the past when he reacted to every needle-point. "I do enjoy and embrace pressure. There's no doubt about it. It does give you opportunities to be able to be pushed to a corner and then try and respond. But I was critical too, earlier [of himself and others], because a lot of pressure has been put on me by people. I've put pressure on myself," Ashwin told reporters on Friday.

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"The pressure I've always responded to - in answering someone, in a performance or in a press conference. But it's not like that now. I want to play cricket with a smile on my face. I promised myself 4-5 years ago that I won't respond to anyone, and I've been maintaining that till now," he added.

The mental detachment to situations and people around him has helped Ashwin to clearly demarcate between his primary and secondary suits - bowling and batting.

"For me to compartmentalise both has taken its own due, and at this stage, I'm able to sequence that and split both of them," he said.

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