India's highest Test wicket-takers, full list: Jadeja enters top five

Jadeja entered the third Test against New Zealand in Mumbai sitting on 309 wickets from 76 games, just two shy of the 311 wickets taken by two long-serving fast bowlers for India: Zaheer Khan and Ishant Sharma.

New Zealand won the toss and chose to bat first on a surface that had bite from the first session itself, with the occasional ball turning and bouncing past the bat. Three wickets fell in the first session, but none of them belonged to Jadeja as the left-arm spinner was settling into his rhythm.

Also read: Ravindra Jadeja joins rare all-rounders list with 300th Test wicket

Just when the pair of Will Young and Daryl Mitchell looked to take the game away from the hosts in the post-lunch session, having added 87 for the fourth wicket, Jadeja struck. In a trademark left-arm spinners' dismissal, he got Young to lunge forward before getting the ball to turn just enough to take the outside edge to slip.

It took Jadeja 11.2 overs to get his first breakthrough, but only three balls to get his second as Tom Blundell got a ripper that pitched on middle and leg and hit off. Four overs later, he knocked over another set of stumps, this time of Glenn Phillips, and this time by getting it to go on straight with the arm.

Jadeja level with BS Bedi

With Phillips' wicket, Jadeja also crossed both Zaheer and Ishant's tally of 311 wickets to become the fifth-highest wicket-taker for India in Test history and the seventh to breach the 300-wicket mark. Among left-arm bowlers, he is now the highest among Indians.

Jadeja was far from done though. In the third session, he came back to clean up both Ish Sodhi and Matt Henry in the same over to make it his second double-wicket over of the day. With that, he registered his 14th five-wicket haul in Test cricket, equalling another great Indian left-arm spinner, Bishan Singh Bedi, who had 14 five-fors from 118 innings compared to Jadeja's 145.

India's highest wicket-takers in Test cricket