Instead of nitpicking, lets appreciate the value of Ravindra Jadeja

The ongoing series – still at 2-1 after India’s resilience at Old Trafford – could so easily have been very different had Joe Root held onto a thick edge off the bat of Ravindra Jadeja shortly before lunch on the final day. And how different Jadeja’s Test could have looked. 

Had the catch been taken in the slips, Jadeja would have been out first ball, Jofra Archer would have had two in two and India, trailing by 89 runs, would have been five down. 

Instead, Jadeja used that reprieve to help India draw a match they looked like losing at one stage on day four, in the process registering his fifth Test hundred. In this series, Jadeja has reeled off four fifties and a century in his last six innings for a tally of 454 runs at an average of 113.50. 

With the ball, he has bowled 136.1 overs for his 13 wickets which have come at 67.71 apiece at a strike-rate of 116.71. Four of those 13 came in England’s mammoth innings in Manchester, Jadeja snaring 4/143 from 37.1 overs. 

While Jadeja’s batting in Tests turned a corner during the 2018 tour of England, his left-arm spin has rarely threatened in SENA countries. He does not have the guile of his long-time bowling partner, Ravichandran Ashwin, or the tactical nous of Anil Kumble. He bowls stump to stump, rarely deviates, and gets the odd bit of drift (see the brilliant dismissal of Joe Root at Old Trafford for reference). 

Of his career 330 Test wickets, 63 have come from 28 Tests spread across SENA countries. The average in these matches jumps from his career average of 25.06 to 41.71 and his strike-rate from 58.4 to 66. Jadeja is not the first Asian spinner to struggle in SENA countries, where the nature of tracks are not as conducive to turn and there are often a mixture of flat tracks or pacier decks. 

Could he have developed something? Yes, but that is not to say he did not try. Jadeja does not spin the ball sharply and finds success more on turning tracks back home, where he has taken 328 of his career 330 wickets. Outside of Asia, Jadeja becomes more of a holding bowler, restrictive instead of attacking. We can question the difference in skill in India and away from India, but to deride an allrounder of Jadeja’s skill is just silly. 

Whenever Jadeja has been sidelined with injury, the balance of India’s Test 11 has been thrown out of whack. It has forced the management to make some dubious calls, scrambling to play a seam bowler who can bat a bit or add a specialist batsman while reducing the team’s ability to take 20 wickets. 

With the bat, Jadeja averages 37 in SENA countries with two centuries and 10 fifties. For someone who bats at No 6 and No 7, and with the tail, these are very respectable numbers. During the ongoing series, Jadeja crossed 1000 runs in England. He has so far scored 1,041 in the country while batting at No 6 or lower, which is second only to the legendary Sir Garfield Sobers among visiting players. Jadeja’s 34 wickets in England place him behind Sobers (1,820 runs and 62 wickets) and Wilfred Rhodes (1,032 runs and 42 wickets in Australia) as the only three allrounders to score 1,000 runs and take over 30 wickets in a single overseas country. 

Yet fans and former cricketers ask why he has not won India matches outside of the subcontinent. On social media and in the comment section of YouTube videos, Jadeja is still pilloried by Indian cricket fans for not having won a single Player-of-the-Match award outside the subcontinent. Former India opener Navjot Singh Sidhu, after the Manchester draw, was critical of Jadeja’s ability to win India Test matches away from home. 

Before that, after India came agonizingly close to winning the third Test at Lord’s, and Jadeja was left not out on 61, Sidhu, Sanjay Manjrekar and Mohammad Azharuddin were among those who felt that the allrounder was too conservative in his approach and that a few risks might have seen India go up 2-1 instead of England. Moeen Ali, the England allrounder, chimed in after the Lord’s Test about how he felt Jadeja was “at his peak of his batting” but is “not outstanding” with the ball. 

This is the same Jadeja, remember, was derided across social media platforms moniker of “His Lordship Sir Sri Sri Ravindra Jadeja” and then during five days of a Test match against Australia in 2013 had his Wikipedia page edited 93 times. Before Jadeja’s page was restored, the opening summary of the allrounder read like this: “Sir Ravindra Jadeja or Ravindrasinh Anirudhsinh Jadeja (born 6 December 1988) is a philanthropist, a Nobel Prize winner, a double Laureus Sportsman of the Year and the nearest human to being god. Other than that, he is an Indian cricketer.”

It was during that home series against Australia that the tone of jokes at Jadeja’s expense shifted, and a wider appreciation of his skill became evident. Not that Jadeja gives two hoots about what is said about him by online trolls. This is a man who prides himself on being a Rajput – which translates, literally, to son of a king – by birth and whose work ethic has been singled out as second to none by several Indian dressing rooms. 

He is, let’s not forget, the old member of a transitional Indian squad. Jadeja will turn 37 in December, an age where most Indian cricketers have retired. Seldom have Indian allrounders played on past that age in Test cricket. So instead of finding fault in Jadeja’s overseas numbers or labelling him as a home track bully, lets instead savour whatever time he has left in an Indian jersey.