Former South African captain AB de Villiers has backed Ravindra Jadeja’s gameplay in the second innings of the third Test match against England at Lord’s. Jadeja adopted a sedate approach and scored a gutsy knock of 61 runs off 181 balls in the run chase of 193 runs.

The left-hander added 30, 35, and 23 with Nitish Reddy, Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Siraj respectively, to keep India alive. The visitors were left reeling at 112-8 after Nitish Kumar Reddy was dismissed just before the lunch break.

Jadeja mostly rotated the strike on the fourth ball of the over while he was batting with Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Siraj.

AB de Villiers said on his YouTube Channel, “I must tell you guys, if I was out there, I would have played a lot more attacking strokes and probably would have come up way more short than Jaddu did. Just stayed so calm.”

“He was happy to sort of play Ben Stokes’s game plan, not really trying to change anything, taking the one when he needed to, not taking the ones early on in the over, around ball number four. He generally took the one, trusting Siraj at the other end to look after, Bumrah as well,” he added.

AB noted that England captain Ben Stokes was trying to frustrate Ravindra Jadeja but the left-hander was able to stick to his plan.

AB added, “Stokes in the final innings, the way you always try to really frustrate Jaddu out, and Jaddu sort of not letting in on that. I mean he [it] was incredible, both of them playing cat and mouse game, not allowing Jaddu any free or easy boundaries, and also similar for Jaddu, he didn’t allow Stokes to dominate terms too much as well.”

The fourth Test match between England and India will be played at Emirates Old Trafford, Manchester, from July 23 onwards.