IND vs ENG: Why a more aggressive batting approach could benefit Ravindra Jadeja and India | Cricket News

“Ravindra Jadeja, lekin voh idhar nahi pada (but he didn’t study here)” the sentry at the gate of the famous The Rajkumar College in Rajkot, the alumni includes Ranjitsinghji, Duleepsinhji, Ajay Jadeja, five other Test cricketers and several first-class players, announces grandly about his favourite player in the Indian team.
The sun has begun to sink, the college has just shut for the day, and the man who will guard nothingness in the nights perks up: “Voh humare jaisey hain. (He is like us).” Not from the clan of rajas and the royals who once dotted the college, that is. Jadeja, born in a one-room government flat to a nurse and a security guard, has risen in stature to being called ‘Bapu’, endearment for kings and mass leaders these days. The few around the guard brle when it is put to them that Axar Patel is also called Bapu some of his IPL team-mates.“Jadeja is Bapu, not Axar”.
But their Bapu, who hails from the Jamnagar, is in a spot of bother now. On and off the field. He usually shuts critics with grand performances when talks swirls against him, and his faithful seem pretty confident. Jadeja’s father recently gave a bruising interview, dragging mud all over. Jadeja responded against the interview in support of his wife, who incidentally is a rising politician from the ruling party BJP. “His father might have said stuff, but he is doing well – wife is in BJP, he is playing for India, he is loved here … what else is needed?” says a young man at the college gate. The conversation drifts to suggestions on where the best Kathiawadi cuisine in the city is.
Lot on the plate
The big-picture view from the young man is right. But Jadeja, though, does have a lot on his plate. Especially on the field. His left-arm hasn’t been as deadly with the ball and bat as before. He has even been involved in the unthinkable, run-out, jogging diagonally across, treading the longest way to the other end and found short an under-arm flick from Ben Stokes.
The batting dip is a touch curious and involves his greater ambition of becoming a proper Test batsman that he achieved and is the reason he is played as the sole spinner in overseas conditions. In 2018, in the turnaround tour of his career in England, he stunned everyone with his batting. He was more compact than before, better shot-selection, awareness of his off stump, greater knack in art of building an innings.

All those elements now seem to have curiously hindered him at home where possibly the younger Jadeja-like flamboyance could help more. Especially against England. Especially in the absence of Rishabh Pant. India’s lower order is stellar and the main reason behind their success at home against Australia in the last series was Axar, Ashwin, and Jadeja soaking up the middle order’s failures.
But that was Australia; against this Bazball England, Jadeja probably needs a different approach. Axar tried in both games, got runs too and fell to soft dismissals. Ashwin, one susses, is trying to get more positive in his brief stays thus far. Jadeja too probably can try, but has seen so much success with his more patient style that he is perhaps confident he can still pull it off in that vein.

Missing bite
It’s his bowling that India will need more to fire. This isn’t the old England where they could seemingly roll their arm over and trigger chaos. India’s lack of trust in their own batting too has led them to sweat over their pitches ever so carefully: Rahul Dravid standing with his arms on his hip peering at the pitch will go down as the most recurrent visual of the two Tests. At the end of every session, he walks past his incoming troop and rushes to have a look at the track before the groundsmen’s brooms sweep the surface. The likes of Jadeja haven’t got an akhada, a rank-turner yet.
“I am not the type of individual who feels the need to tell people daily how hard I am working. Rather, I would, as I do on social media, keep showing my horse riding! Because no one knows how to do it. Koi kar hi nahi saktha! [in his farmhouse, Jadeja likes to ride on unsaddled horses at night],” he once told this newspaper.
It’s time, then, for Jadeja to ride his return to bowling form and luckily for him, it can start at his home track where he has conjured bucketful of wickets in domestic cricket. Whenever he was out of the Indian team, it’s here he would roar back to form with five-fors. Once in 2015, the former curator Rasik Makvana, potbellied magician with a rake, produced sandpits where Jadeja grabbed 38 wickets in four games to storm back into the national team. He knows the ideal length, trajectory, pace, and trickery needed. It’s a series in India, but the best bowler has been Jasprit Bumrah. It’s time a spinner rose to stop Bazball. Perhaps, it’s Bapu’s turn.