Earlier this month, Ravindra Jadeja turned 30. It is a tricky age for cricketers; in most cases they have fewer internationals ahead of them than behind.
It is an inflection point in a career. Spinners tend to improve with age, fast bowlers lose some of their intensity while batsmen learn to dip into their bag of experience to keep playing at close to their best. Some have their finest years after 30. Rahul Dravid scored more runs and Anil Kumble claimed more wickets after that age. This is not unusual.
Jadeja is the ICC’s fifth best bowler in the world — the highest-ranked in the current series in Australia — and the No. 2 all-rounder behind Bangladesh’s Shakib Al Hasan. It is a good place to be when you turn 30, except that Jadeja seems excess to the Indian team’s requirements. It is an intriguing case.
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Should have played in Perth
It is not hindsight alone that dictates he should have played in Perth. There was sound cricketing logic to the choice even before the captains went out for the toss.
For one, if the track helped fast bowlers, then what would the fourth bowler do which the first three could not? For another, his bowling would have provided variety. And for a third, there was the matter of his batting in the lower middle order. India’s batting has struggled at either end of the line-up, and they will carry that worry into the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne.
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This is not to say that Jadeja is the magic solution to India’s problems, or that India might have won in Perth had he played. Far from it. The fact is, the Shastri-Kohli duo got team selection wrong, and not for the first time this year. Kohli has said he would have played Umesh Yadav even if Ashwin had been fit. That sounds more like an excuse than a justification.
Baffling
For someone who has been playing at the highest level for six years now, Jadeja continues to baffle. He has caused more people to wonder about him than most. Early in his career, a writer described him thus: “When he bats, he is a bowler, and when he bowls he is a batsman.” It was cheeky, but it summed up the confusion.
He was an all-rounder, it was thought, if you stretched the definition. Indian cricket has had leading batsmen at domestic level who turned out to be bowlers at the international level. Roger Binny, who opened for Karnataka is a good example.
Jadeja was a white ball certainty who became a red ball regular and then went missing from both teams. He has played 39 Tests, a number large enough to place a player in context. And then the unfairness of it all emerges.
Fantastic figures
Jadeja has 185 wickets and nine five-wicket hauls. At one time it was considered sacrilege to speak of him in the same breath as the legendary Bishan Bedi. Yet, in the same number of matches, the great Bedi had 146 wickets; he did play 20 away matches compared to Jadeja’s 11, but the statistical difference is instructive.
At the same stage, India’s greatest all-rounder Kapil Dev had 30 wickets fewer and about 200 runs more as a batsman than Jadeja. You need not make a monument of these figures, but you can’t ignore them.
At the domestic level, Jadeja’s three first class triple centuries are seen as a comment on the Ranji Trophy bowling rather than a tribute to his batting. He had made these triples before the age of 24, to join a list of those who had three or more: W G Grace, Bill Ponsford, Don Bradman, Walter Hammond, Graeme Hick, Brian Lara, Michael Hussey. Not bad company, but ironically, it caused Jadeja to be taken less seriously.
Weighty contribution
As India won 10 of 13 home Tests from September 2016, Jadeja’s contribution was significant: 71 wickets at 22.83 and 556 runs at 42.76. Yet the focus remained on the batsmen. At Chennai, his seven for 48 turned the Test against England which had seemed headed for a draw.
In 2017, Jadeja was the No. 1 all rounder as well as the No. 1 Test bowler in the world. It was confirmation of his status as an attacking bowler, a decent batsman and an outstanding fielder.
Yet, through all this, he has never been a certainty in the national side. In the last series in England, he sat out the first four matches but when he came in for the Oval Test, he made an unbeaten 86 and picked up seven wickets. Later he scored his first century, at home against the West Indies. Wrist spinners Yuzuvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav who made their debuts after him not only bowled the more romantic wrist spin, they were successful too.
At 30, Jadeja can be forgiven for wondering what is the ‘X’ factor he requires to be a regular in a team that is hardly flush with all-rounders.