IPL 2018: Ravichandran Ashwin wishes to emulate leadership skills of Kohli and Dhoni

The eleventh edition of the Indian Premier League will start in a couple of weeks. The retention ceremony was staged in December after which the auction took place in Bangalore in January. Kings XI Punjab is a franchise who went hammer and tongs for some prominent names at the auction. They have been erratic in the previous ten seasons of the T20 tournament and thus want to make amends.

They managed to rope in some utility players including the likes of Christopher Henry Gayle, Andrew Tye, Yuvraj Singh and Ravichandran Ashwin. Ashwin has been announced as the skipper of the franchise. Recently, the Tamil Nadu spinner spoke to the media regarding the qualities he wishes to draw from MS Dhoni and the current Indian captain Virat Kohli.

“Stay original as possible”- Ashwin

“Ya I mean it’s very important to take all the best qualities from each one of them and they have their own strengths and to take those strengths and try and imbibe into my captaincy is going to be very critical, but for me to try and stay original is very very important and not really look to be someone else and go out of my comfort zone in as much as I’ll take those from them as stay original as possible,” Ashwin was quoted as saying by Sportstar.

The tweaker also talked about the stature of the tournament and the responsibility that comes with the captaincy. However, he looks unfazed by the challenge.

“I mean leading a franchise in the IPL will be a massive pressure because it’s a big tournament and well all know about it and leading a side is going to come with a lot of responsibility, but pressure is something I really like to take upon myself and I really look forward to the challenge and I’m sure I can do really well in this job,” he added

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