Ravishankar Jayadritha Shastri (born 27 May 1962) is a former Indian

Indian cricket team

The Indian cricket team is the national cricket team of India. Governed by the Board of Control for Cricket in India , it is a full member of the International Cricket Council with Test and One Day International status....

 cricket

Cricket

Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...

er and captain. He was an all–rounder

All-rounder

An all-rounder is a cricketer who regularly performs well at both batting and bowling. Although all bowlers must bat and quite a few batsmen do bowl occasionally, most players are skilled in only one of the two disciplines and are considered specialists...

 who batted

Batting (cricket)

In the sport of cricket, batting is the act or skill of hitting the cricket ball with a cricket bat to score runs or prevent the loss of one's wicket. A player who is currently batting is denoted as a batsman, while the act of hitting the ball is called a shot or stroke...

 right-handed and bowled

Bowling (cricket)

In the sport of cricket, bowling is the action of propelling the ball toward the wicket defended by a batsman. A player skilled at bowling is called a bowler; a bowler who is also a competent batsman is known as an all-rounder...

 left arm spin

Left-arm orthodox spin

Left-arm orthodox spin is a type of bowling in the sport of cricket.Left-arm orthodox spin is bowled by a left arm bowler using the fingers to spin the ball from right to left of the cricket pitch...

. His international career started when he was 18 years old and lasted for 12 years. He started his career purely as a bowler but gradually became more of a batsman who could bowl.

As a batsman, he was essentially defensive with the "chapati shot" (a flick off the pads) being his trademark shot, but could raise his strike rate

Strike rate

Strike rate refers to two different statistics in the sport of cricket. Batting strike rate is a measure of how frequently a batsman achieves the primary goal of batting, namely scoring runs. Bowling strike rate is a measure of how frequently a bowler achieves the primary goal of bowling, namely...

 when required.