Follow UsIndia’s narrow 22-run loss in the third Test at Lord’s has opened up a can of worms. In the aftermath of the loss, several opinions have come in against Ravindra Jadeja, who stayed unbeaten on 61* in the run chase.
One of them was from former Indian pacer Balwinder Singh Sandhu, who opined that Jadeja should have trusted No.10 batter Jasprit Bumrah more with the bat. The former Indian pacer reckoned that Jadeja could have found the fence had he not decided to rotate the strike with two balls remaining in each over.
"If only he had trusted Jasprit Bumrah a bit more - especially when Bumrah was defending so well - and resisted taking that single off the fourth ball to retain strike. Had he backed himself to finish it in those last two balls, with the field up, it was a perfect moment to go for the boundary,” Sandhu wrote in his column for Mid-day.
Sandhu also went down memory lane to reveal how Jadeja was always a street-smart cricketer, and added that he showed maturity beyond his age during his U-19 days. However, what was always a concern was Jadeja’s ‘fear of failing’, something he reckoned came back to bite him at Lord’s.
"Coming to the final moments, Ravindra Jadeja is someone I’ve known since his U-19 days at the National Cricket Academy. Even back then, he showed maturity beyond his age. He’s a smart cricketer, calm under pressure, but this time, maybe the fear of failing, or the pressure of not trusting the tail, got the better of him," Sandhu wrote in his column for Mid-day.
India are now trailing 1-2 in the series, with the fourth Test at Old Trafford in Manchester starting July 23.