Cricket World Cup: How India adopted Dhoni’s CSK way to bundle Australia on a Chennai turner | Cricket-world-cup News

An hour-and-a-half before the toss on Sunday, Ravindra Jadeja stepped out of the dressing room and headed straight to the square where India’s support staff were taking a hard look at the pitch. As he walked down from one end to the other, he gleefully exchanged high fives with Hardik Pandya, pointing out the spots in the strip that were already exciting him. For all the talk of this being a home coming for R Ashwin, it was Jadeja who actually felt so. This was the typical MA Chidambaram Stadium track that Jadeja is so accustomed to, where the ball grips and turns so quickly that it doesn’t give the incoming batsmen any time to get used to the pace of the pitch. At one point when R Ashwin and Kuldeep Yadav were getting the ball to rip off the surface and kept beating the batsmen, Jadeja was seen gesturing to Rohit Sharma to hand over the ball to him. Who better than him to know what he can do here on such a track.
For two months a year, when the IPL happens, there is a template masterminded MS Dhoni that Chennai Super Kings stick with. Having stocked their squad with tweakers, they roll out pitches with plenty of assance for their three spinners, especially those who bowl in line with the stumps. Barring the recently concluded IPL, where CSK opted for flat decks at the start, it is a template that has worked wonders for them.
It is not as if Australia were blinded such conditions. Since they landed here last Tuesday, they must have seen this coming. Every time they have come here for a practice session over the past week, they have seen a layer of grass shaved. They have been preparing for a turner all along, even roughing up the practice pitches, making their batsmen front up to spinners. With no dew around, and the pitch receiving very little water in the three days leading up to the match, pitch played to its character.

All it takes is just one ball for the CSK faithfuls to get excited here. In an IPL game in 2020 when Jadeja got one to spin, Stephen Fleming would perk up in the dugout, telling later, “We were excited when we saw Jadeja turn one”. Just one sighting is usually enough. On Sunday night, it came from Ashwin first, a vicious undercut carrom ball that swerved in before breaking sharply away from Steve Smith. A puff of dust swirled up, and Smith had a goggle-eyed stare at it. Watching it was Jadeja, who waved his arms theatrically; he must have then known that this could be his day.
With three world-class spinners — Jadeja, Ashwin and Kuldeep Yadav – in the squad, India chose to borrow the Chennai template for their World Cup opening fixture against Australia. And it was the trio who broke Australia’s back as India seemed to have found the ideal formula to go forward in the World Cup. When the pitches were announced earlier, the tracks chosen for India seemed to hint at such a trend but then India initially buckled under pressure of attempting ‘balance’ in their squad and didn’t pick Ashwin or Yuzvendra Chahal. In the end, they did a U-turn getting Ashwin back.
The three spinners combined for figures of 30-3-104-6 with Jadeja being the miser one of the lot, giving away only 28 runs in 10 overs and picking up three wickets including that of Steve Smith which triggered a sensational collapse as Australia went from 110/2 to 140/7. As chants of “Dhoni, Dhoni” rung around the stands, it seemed a picture perfect.
“I play for CSK so I know the conditions here,” Jadeja said. “When I saw the pitch I thought I should get 2-3 wickets, luckily I got 3 wickets and am very happy. I was looking to bowl into the stumps and there was turn, you never know which one is going straight and which one is turning, the odd ball was turning and I was just mixing the pace,” he added.
And it was Jadeja who reaped the rewards for some of the good work done Jasprit Bumrah, Ashwin and Kuldeep. When David Warner and Smith built a 69-run stand for the second wicket, it was evident that any total beyond 250 would be a challenging one for India to chase under lights. Ashwin and Kuldeep were a bit slow through the air in the initial spell, but very soon began to alter their pace, bowling a bit quicker. While Kuldeep did give the opening removing Warner with a wrong ’un, it was Jadeja who found the most natural length and speed to bowl in these conditions.
You could see this turning out into a ‘who blinks first’ as dot balls began to pile up. 45 boundary-laden deliveries later, with Smith and Marnus Labuschagne showing no signs of throwing it away, Jadeja took it in his own hands off his fifth over. Having conceded 15 runs of his first four overs, Jadeja was beginning to get more meaner removing Smith.Most Read
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Having nudged his way to 46 off 71 deliveries, showing the sort of patience to stay on this pitch, in the hope to build a platform where Glenn Maxwell and Cameron Green could get some quick runs later on, Smith’s defence was breached Jadeja in the most stunning manner that seemed to have set off a panic button in Australia’s dressing room.
This was a classical Jadeja dismissal, where the ball pitched in the line of middle and leg stump and spun sharply to hit the top of off-stump. This is the line and length that Jadeja bowls with the red ball, and here on a pitch that had plenty of help, was not going to let go off the chance. Smith was holding his bat in the line of where the ball had landed; not where it was headed. Jadeja then removed Labuschagne and Alex Carey in the space of two deliveries as Australia began to slip.
From there on Kuldeep and Ashwin got back to dismiss Maxwell and Green in successive overs as Australia were staring at being bowled out for a below-par total. From 140/7, their lower order that includes Cummins, Mitchell Starc took them 199 a target that brought the game alive.