The Indian Express (Delhi Edition)
Jadeja provides silver lining
Left-arm spinner takes five wickets to contain Australia to a sub-500 run total; Smith 178 n.o, Maxwell 104
On taking inspiration from Smith
He probably lifts the team to another level because he makes the game look so easy as well. We watch him play and everyone is in awe of the way he goes about it. He does it in such a different, unique way and he owns that. He doesn’t care what people say about his technique. He knows he has his technique doubters. So he’s a guy that people feed off. And he’s a very inspirational leader with the way he’s gone about his career. He obviously had his doubters, when he came into the team he was a leg-spinning all-rounder, batting at 8 or 9. So what a turnaround he has had.
On his partnership with Smith
Obviously yesterday, I came in at a time when it was a bit of a tricky situation. I think we were 140/4, and luckily I had Steve at the other end, who is quite experienced. Worked really well with him, the ball was reverse swinging and tried to play as straight as I could and keep my pads out of the way. The plan was pretty simple - to keep doing that for as long as possible and try to keep the Indian team out on their feet for as long as possible.
On his role with the ball
If I’m going to be playing at number six, I have to be giving something else in the team. You can’t get by being a fielder and a batsman, you need the extra string to your bow when you’re at number six. IN A way, Ravindra Jadeja is the mirror image of Ravichandran Ashwin. Almost everything Ashwin does with the ball is memorable for some reason or the other. However, this home season has featured an organic evolution in Jadeja's bowling — not aesthetically — but in terms of skill and thought. You talk about Ashwin’s weapons of tease—the loop, the drift, the turn, the differentlynamed variations, the would-be variations— the penchant for scripting records. Jadeja, in contrast, was seen as repetitive images of the ball landing at the same place, over and over again, a counterbalance to Ashwin.
On Friday, Jadeja’s relentless accuracy was the decisive difference between Australia ending up with 451 runs and not posting a humungous 550-plus total that would have taken out the possibility of an Indian victory.
Jadeja’s bowling isn't one-dimensional but the soul of his craft is accuracy and precision. Of late, he has added the skill of ripping the ball more - his slow (er) deliveries have more bite as a result and don't just float, and given him confidence to toss it more often and enhancing his potency on all kinds of surfaces.
On Friday, that relentlessly-practised craft was the most valuable craft.
And that possibly was the reason he was stand-in Rahane’s most trusted weapon of the day .
The priority, when Jadeja came onto bowl AP in the morning, was stifling runs. Both Umesh Yadav and Ishant Sharma seemed a touch rusty, while Glenn Maxwell and Steven Smith looked completely untroubled. In no time, Jadeja vindicated his skipper’s convictions. He reeled out four successive maiden overs, and exposed the first signs of the strip throwing tantrums. A rough just outside the right-hander’s leg stump was giving batsmen,especially Maxwell, reasons to bother.
Maxwell, hitherto unfazed and on a hundred, suddenly looked a bit shaky. Jadeja first dried up the runs with his tight off-stump line, then continuously tickled the rough, and Maxwell eventually perished.
The angle took the ball into him, before it spat off the rough to take his outside edge. Breaking the 191-run partnership, before it aquired a larger dimension, was pivotal to India’s comeback prospects.
Later, Maxwell admitted the dilemma when facing Jadeja. “There was this area in the wicket where it was a little bit dry and he kept on hitting around it and it just reacted differently. I got a couple of times beaten while playing forward, but it missed the bat by fair margin,” he recollected.
It sowed the seeds of doubts in his mind. “If I’m in and I’m missing by that far it is not that easy. He was hitting that consistent spot and if it skidded on, it hit stumps. if it spun, you had a chance to nick it. It took him a while to find that awkward spot and we just wanted to find the singles last afternoon, but today he was very accurate,” he confided.
If Maxwell, a centurion himself, admitted of doubts, you could imagine how confounding a proposition he could have been to the lower-order batsman. Wade scored 37, but looked always uncomfortable when playing Jadeja. The rough would have been even more a menace for him, as he was a lefthander. After a chancy innings, the ball detonated off the rough to take his outside edge. Again, it came at a crucial moment when a partnership was building — he and Smith had already put on 64 runs.
Umesh candidly summed up the crux of Jadeja'sbowling:"ifhegetsevenabitofrough, he knows what his aim is and where he has to bowl."
But the most defining moment involving Jadeja came when he flicked back a throw from the deep and affected the run out of Josh Hazlewood. It was a rare moment an Indian fielder showed some ingenuity. The other instances, were either comical or shocking. Sample these: At one point, Cheteshwar Pujara and Umesh Yadav collided at cover to let through a boundary. In the 108th over of Australia's innings, Ishant Sharma threw wildly at the wrong end with Maxwell struggling to make his ground
In the broader canvas, he made up for Ashwin’s blandness. It must have been the latter’s ceaseless toil round the season that had eventually taken a toll, but he mostly bowled flat, quick and without his cryptic variations. The vaunted gifts were missing, as was that spark.
In a sense, Ashwin was symptomatic of India’s own disenchantment. Maybe, they missed Kohli. In the moments when Indians seemed like they were waiting for things to happen, looking listless and letting things drift is when they needed Kohli to turbocharge them. Like he had on the tense second session of the second day against England in Mohali, or as recently as Australia’s second innings in Bangalore. Not that Rahane, as the stand-in, was forlorn or aloof, but they didn’t have Kohli’s energy to feed off. Their attention also seemed a little scattered, betraying an impression that there were several distinct opinions and voices on the field.
Now it’s time perhaps the craft and gifts of Jadeja got an equitable appraisal as Ashwin’s. Withittootherecognitionthatwhilewemay not remember too many of those wickets with the kind of striking clarity Ashwin offers, they all read and look the same in the record book.and they all contribute to the larger cause of the team winning. Number of runs Steve Smith scored. It is the third-highest score by an Australian in India behind Dean Jones (210) and Matthew Hayden (201).
Ravindra Jadeja's bowling average in the first innings. It is the best among Indian spinners since the start of England series. AP