Ace India spinner Ravichandran Ashwin recently shared his experience during 2010 IPL. He said that he used to think bowling in T20s would be easy but it was not at all and was like a "hard slap" to him. During a podcast with Sanjay Manjrekar for 'ESPNCricinfo', he shared how the 2010 IPL with the Chennai Super Kings affected him. Ashwin said he was dropped from the CSK squad after two bad games, which was like a "hard slap" to him, and he also felt that coach Stephen Fleming did not back him enough at that time.

"People thought that I think highly of myself but flattening of the curve happened when I played in the IPL. It was like a slap in the face like 'listen boss you are not even here'. I thought bowling in a T20 game was much easier than bowling in a first-class game," Ashwin recalled.

He also shared it was a game against Royal Challengers Bangalore in Bengaluru where Robin Uthappa and Mark Boucher hit him big when he bowled 14th, 16th, 18th and 20th over at RCB.

"I didn't get wickets but went for 40 or 45 runs and put my team into a hole as the next game went into Super Over and we lost it and I was dropped from the squad. It felt like a hard slap," he said.

He also shared at that time, IPL franchises, during home games, used to release players who are not in first 18 in order to save hotel cost and a similar thing happened to Ashwin who was back home watching CSK games on TV and preparing for the future.

From that to today, the spinner has come a long way. The 33-year-old Ashwin has picked 365 wickets from 71 Tests, but his performance in SENA countries (South Africa, England, New Zealand and Australia) didn’t match the records that he has at home games.

"Increasingly, the number of games I've played in England, I've started realising that for a spinner to be bowling in alien conditions and to be able to repeat similar numbers (as at home), you need to be bowling in all the possible right times of the game, first," Ashwin concluded.