Getting serious does it for happy-go-lucky Jadeja
COMEBACK Fresh resolve pays rich dividends for all-rounder
There is something fascinating about Ravindra Jadeja — his naivety, goofiness, sense of exaggerating things and the Sir Ravindra Jadeja jokes that complete the package of a contemporary cricketer who is often the target of friendly jibes. The gap between his promise and delivery is one reason that bred that image. However, behind this facade is an extremely determined cricketer and fierce competitor who has a knack of predicting his immediate future quite accurately.
After his ODI career had gone reasonably well, he proclaimed to his friends and then Saurashtra coach, Debu Mitra, in 2012 that he wanted to play Test cricket. Mitra asked him to live and behave like a Test cricketer and Jadeja responded by cracking two triple centuries. And as the first step towards that goal, he dropped aerial shots from his repertoire. IN AND OUT He got picked, and with time got dropped as well. Away from the India team, however, he spun positivity around him through recreational activities like horse riding and bike riding and by having his close friends around.
Dropped from the side after last year’s England tour, Jadeja took it upon himself to reconfigure his game to be Test ready again. There were a few technical and temperament issues. He turned to Rajkot to work on his comeback.
“He told me ‘I want to get back into the India team. This is the season I want see if I am India-ready again. If I am good enough I will be back’. He had a hunch India will look to play on turners, and his value in those circumstances will be felt greatly,” said Sitanshu Kotak, the Saurashtra coach.
Jadeja got down to fixing a few issues. His round-arm action affected his ability to spin the ball and he straightened it to impart more revs and get the ball to rip off the wicket. He also anticipated being called to bowl early. So, he started bowling with the new ball that made his arm ball — his strength — almost unreadable. THE BIG WEAPON Slanting in deliveries from wide of the crease into the batsman and then taking it away, Jadeja realised how using the crease would help sharpen to his bowling.
“There is a lot that we worked on his game. We also worked on his balance and trigger movement to get it right while batting,” said Kotak. His falling head disturbed his balance, and his front-foot trigger movement against pacers had led to playing away from the body. He is working on shifting the trigger movement to his back foot.
“The bigger question was also to get him mentally tuned to play down the order. For Saurashtra, he bats at No 5 but for India, he bats at 7 or 8, and that affects his thinking. He either goes for his shots or gets impatient when tailenders’ wickets start falling.”
After claiming 37 wickets in three Ranji matches, he had to prove himself for India.
After his match-winning show in Mohali, Jadeja said: “When wickets came in the first two-three matches, confidence followed. I knew I had to do well for India too. Otherwise you get an image that you do well only in domestic cricket.”
Having returned from the wilderness to steal the limelight, Jadeja for many still remains unexplained, although it was this flash of brilliance that saw MS Dhoni declare India need Jadeja. And on a rank turner, he proved he is a must in the playing eleven.