A half-century at the MCG and a four-wicket haul and a stellar run-out of Steve Smith at Sydney has put the focus back on India’s ‘genuine’ all-rounder, writes Rohit Sankar.
If Test cricket could borrow the X-factor Player rule from the Big Bash League, Ravindra Jadeja would almost always be one of India’s two substitutes. India like him, but they don’t fully trust him. They rave about him every time he pulls off a stunning run out, plays a good cameo or takes out the main batsman from the opposition side, yet when the next away tour begins, he rarely finds a place in the starting XI.
And for his next trick, Sir Jadeja will TURN WATER INTO WINE. #AUSvIND
— Melinda Farrell (@melindafarrell) January 8, 2021
Since his debut, Jadeja has played in the first match of an away tour in conditions where India are likely to play a lone spinner (read, South Africa, England, New Zealand and Australia, the notorious SENA nations) just twice: at Auckland and Nottingham, with both instances coming in 2014.
On the second of those two occasions, former New Zealand captain Martin Crowe was brutal on India’s decision to field Jadeja over Ashwin, calling the former an “ordinary” spinner.
“Normally, spin would be India’s sure thing. No longer is that case if Ravindra Jadeja is deemed your best spinner. It smacks of something extremely odd. Jadeja can bat, often flamboyantly and recklessly, and as a leftie at No.7 he can do some damage. But his left-arm spin is nothing short of ordinary. At best he is a third-choice spinner in Indian conditions, where three are often needed,” Crowe wrote on ESPNCricinfo.
It wasn’t the first, or the last time the Indian all-rounder would be criticised for his place in the side. With Ravichandran Ashwin, an aesthetically pleasing spinner who satisfied the thirst of the Test purists, available to India, Jadeja was always a sidekick when they went on one of their difficult away tours.
Between 2015 and the Melbourne Test in 2018 against Australia, Jadeja played as the lone spinner, home or away, just once – in the fifth Test in England in 2018, a dead rubber. When he played as the frontline spinner in Melbourne the last time India came to Australia, Ashwin was still recovering and with the series still in line, India did not want to risk a relatively newbie in Kuldeep Yadav.
Jadeja was the most economical of India’s bowlers on a flat MCG wicket, bowling 25 overs for just 45 runs while picking two wickets. In the second innings, he sent back three of the top seven to finish with five wickets as India won emphatically. It felt like a quietly important statement of his strengths. And yet as Sydney came, he was immediately handed a support spinner in Kuldeep who went on to steal the headlines, and the coach’s admiration, with a five-wicket haul. Ravi Shastri hailed Kuldeep as India’s “first-choice spinner” in overseas Tests at the end of the Test.
