da betsson： Ravindra Jadeja was relentless in his attack of England’s weaknesses, but he was just doing what he does

da supremo： Sidharth Monga20-Dec-20162:39

Ganguly: Jadeja has grown as a cricketer in this series

Try running with your head tilted up towards the sky, your wide-brim hat on top, and the head parallel to the ground. Hang on. Focus on the ball that is already ahead of you and is coming down fast. Go full pelt while you are at it; if you go slowly you won’t make it by the time the ball lands. Careful. Don’t move your head or you will lose sight of the ball. Then, after 12 full strides, not straight but at an angle and back from midwicket towards the boundary, as the ball falls over your shoulder, stick your hands out at the exact right time even as you make the final two strides. Fourteen strides of magic. The stable head. The strong legs propelling him towards the ball. No need to dive.The leading edge from Jonny Bairstow wasn’t a skier but seemed to be travelling far enough from fielders. The bowler Ishant Sharma didn’t seem to be too hopeful of a wicket. Ravindra Jadeja didn’t have even half a second to decide which direction to run in and how fast he needed to go. He judged the direction perfectly, and put his head up and charged towards the ball. About 30-35 metres of smooth gliding run without any time to judge the catch because this was not a skier. No TV cameras can do justice to this bit of magic.Magic it was that India needed in the final two sessions of the day if they were to stretch their 3-0 series lead. Seventeen wickets had fallen in 13 sessions before that. The pitch had been flat. Moeen Ali had scored a century, England’s Nos. 8 and 9 had scored fifties without ever looking out, KL Rahul gifted his wicket on 199 and Karun Nair scored a triple-century in only his third Test. You needed some magic to bring this Test to life.’Jadeja perfect in any conditions’ – Kohli

Is he out of Ashwin’s shadow?
Kohli: We as a team don’t think of these things at all that everyone is playing in Ashwin’s shadow. Jadeja takes a lot of pride in his performance. Obviously as a bowler he wants to pick up as many wickets as he can. But if you see, every time Ashwin has picked up wickets, the economy rate from the other end is not more than two. Ashwin will himself tell you that Jadeja has played a massive role in him making those breakthroughs because there is literally no runs from both ends.
Is he no longer just a bad-pitch bowler?
Kohli: We don’t rely on Jadeja as a bad-wicket bowler. He is a perfect bowler in any conditions in Test cricket. He is accurate, and that’s what you need in Test cricket. You don’t necessarily need to have too many variations at your disposal. His strength is bowling at nice pace, not giving too much air to the ball and making the batsman think about how long they can defend. That’s his strength. On any wicket in the world, if you are bowling that accurately for a long time, invariably the batsman will make a mistake.

Magic came through getting little things right. The way Jadeja does. Like in that catch. It wasn’t a spectacular dive. There was no juggling involved at the boundary. It was the coming together of little things: the judgement, the head position, the legs, the extension of the hands. He hardly broke stride. He hardly bowled magic deliveries, but the little things he did right on that pitch came together to become magic.Bairstow’s was the fourth wicket to fall. The first three had fallen to Jadeja. One of them was Cook, for the sixth time in the series. A man whose career Jadeja gave a new lease of life back in 2014 when he dropped him in Southampton. A better tribute to Jadeja can’t come than from Cook. Jadeja is not a spectacular bowler. He doesn’t dip it or drift it alarmingly. So it is not always easy to spot what it is that Jadeja does to get all those wickets. It is a good idea to ask Cook what was special about Jadeja. After all he was averaging 98 against left-arm spin before he came to India: 1372 runs at 3.14 an over for just 14 dismissals.Cook started off by saying, “You can see why he was getting me out. I was missing straight balls or getting caught.”Yet another voice dismissing Jadeja, you thought, but then Cook went deeper. He said it was strange to struggle against left-arm spin for the first time in his career. Then he summed Jadeja up. Nothing like a little grudging respect. “I found him hard work,” Cook said. “It has been a strange thing for me. Credit to him, he found a bit of a weakness there. And he was relentless at it. I wasn’t good enough to cope with it.”Find a weakness. Keep attacking it relentlessly. And with Jadeja’s fitness you never find a release. The weakness here was that Cook was getting a touch too far across when he played left-arm spin. Jadeja kept bowling in an area from where he would repeatedly threaten the inside edge or beat him. He would keep dragging Cook further and further to the left, and then slip one straight in. The accuracy meant you had to take risks lest you be sitting ducks to the one that misbehaves.Through the series, Virat Kohli acknowledged, Jadeja’s pressure helped Ashwin get wickets. On the final day of the series, though, Jadeja kept them all for himself. England will be rightly criticised for getting out to attacking shots – none of their first eight fell defending – but Cook could see why they were doing so. Stuart Broad eventually got one from Jadeja that he could do nothing about. The batsmen were mindful they didn’t want a similar end, and they knew Jadeja had found his rough and was going to keep hitting it relentlessly. They just didn’t back themselves to be good enough for so long that Jadeja starts making mistakes.Eventually Jadeja ended just two wickets behind Ashwin in this series, at five runs apiece cheaper and in 17 overs fewer. In that final dance of victory – when every ball is accompanied by an appeal from the stands – Jadeja was everywhere. Seven wickets, three catches, creating magic, but without tricks.