Skip to main content

Ravindra Jadeja - the Batter - has arrived

Cricket | Test | Sri Lanka Tour of India, 2022 | India | Sri lanka | First Test, Mohali | Ravindra Jadeja

Ravindra Jadeja - the batsman - has seen a cricket career of two halves. Making his international cricket debut in 2012, his career average stood at 21.50 at the end of 2015. He was looked upon as a bowling-allrounder with heroic performances in the 2013 Champions Trophy and in home Test matches with the ball in hand. This was despite the fact that he had scored three triple centuries in domestic first-class cricket. There were times when he batted as low as no. 9 with Ravichandran Ashwin and Wriddhiman Saha preceding him. He had played a few cameos lower down the order but was yet to be proclaimed as a true allrounder.

Cut to 2022, his average today reads 36.46 and if you look at his record from 2016, he scores 57.48 runs per dismissal. That is a dream number for any top-order batsman in cricket. He has shown that he is a good enough no. 6 across conditions across formats. He has played quite a few impactful knocks for the team, his 175* today certainly the most. On the first day of the Test match, he was happily playing the second fiddle as Rishabh Pant teed off to 96 at the other end. Come day 2, he stitched over a hundred runs with Ashwin, brought up his century with a boundary and then smartly farmed the strike as Sri Lanka got into India's lower order. This innings contained all that you expect from a Test batsman - patience, strokeplay, big runs and aggression when needed.

Ravindra Jadeja celebrating his century

When Virat Kohli had decided to go with Jadeja over Ashwin to accompany his four pacers in England last year, people thought he was undermining the latter's ability to pick wickets in foreign conditions. He wasn't. He was simply putting more faith in Jadeja the batsman, who was going to be more important in the seam-friendly conditions than Jadeja, the bowler. He repaid the faith by scoring 56, 40, and 30 respectively at Nottingham, Lord's and Leeds, playing some excellent cricket. He was even promoted as high as no. 5 to provide dynamism to the Indian batting line-up. 

Add his accurate bowling to all the batting heroics, and we have a true all-rounder, ready to walk into any cricket team in the world. Arguably one of the best all-rounders today, along with Ben Stokes and Jason Holder, and Shakib al Hasan maybe. And undoubtedly the best fielder in the world. That's Sir Jadeja for you. He bats, he bowls, he fields.

Feel free to comment and do share my post. Also, follow The Fourth Innings on Twitter: https://twitter.com/the4thinnings.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

KKR: Another Lucky Year?

For the second consecutive time this IPL season, KKR have managed to defend a score quite comfortably ( v SRH and v MI ). They say defending a total is the most difficult aspect of T20 cricket which is why most captains have opted to bowl first in previous editions of the IPL. Yesterday KKR captain Shreyas Iyer opted to bat first and that I think set the tone for rest of the match. KKR looked very strong after the completion of the IPL Auction 2022. They turned that into performances winning three of their first four matches before suffering a five-match losing streak, before winning v RR . Cricket, or rather sport in general, is all about momentum and Kolkata had clearly lost it midway through the tournament. Their top order was failing, Shreyas Iyer and Nitish Rana were inconsistent and most of their bowlers leaked runs. While people like Andre Russell, Sunil Narine and Umesh Yadav had been excellent, other international cricketers like Pat Cummins and Aaron Finch produced ordinary ...

A Look Behind Gujarat Titans' Excellent Record

Cricket | T20 | IPL | IPL 2022 | Gujarat Titans At the end of IPL Auction 2022, I too like other cricket pundits started writing down the best XIs for every IPL team. When I came to the Gujarat Titans squad, I asked myself, "Is Gujarat Titans a good team?" That is when a few thoughts crept up in my mind. Who was going to bat at 3? Will Hardik Pandya be forced to bat out of position? Are Rahul Tewatia and David Miller good enough to take them over the finish line every time? They have got Mohammed Shami, Lockie Ferguson and Rashid Khan, but what after them? Like many, I too discounted the team from 2022 IPL Playoffs contention and focused on stronger looking teams. But today, I stand corrected. Hemant Brar  summed up Gujarat Titans' campaign quite nicely for me:" If Tewatia won't, David Miller will. If Miller won't, Rashid Khan will. If Rashid won't, someone else surely will. " That's been the story for the Gujarat Titans this season. They have fo...

What it Takes to Win the IPL🏆?

Cricket | T20 | IPL | CSK | SRH | MI | DC | KKR | RCB  In this cricket article, I have analysed successful IPL franchises during the 2018-21 period, including but not limited to title winners. Potentially answering the question: How to win the toughest T20 league in the world? , this piece presents what sort of things have actually worked for the teams. Keeping relevance in mind, I have decided to limit my analysis to the latest four-year cycle of the cricket league. A Prolific Top Order CSK ( IPL 2018, IPL 2021 ) Both the times the Chennai Super Kings have won the IPL in the last four-year cycle, one constant has been the huge amount of runs scored by their top order. Ambati Rayudu, Shane Watson, Faf du Plessis, Ruturaj Gaikwad and to an extent Suresh Raina have contributed heavily with the bat in CSK's title-winning runs. Though many were skeptical of Rayudu 's inclusion in the CSK squad, MS Dhoni was confident in his ability to hit both pace and spin as he had a wonderful I...