MATCH STORIES
Follow UsLove him, or hate him, but you cannot ignore him.
Ravindra Jadeja is that kind of a cricketer, especially in T20 cricket. His batting will always derive polarized opinions. For a lower middle-order batter, he has struggled to finish at a high tempo more often than not. As a bowler, he can be mercurial, depending heavily on the nature of the pitch.
But when things are in his favor, he is the last bowler any batter would want to face, and that is irrespective of the format.
Jadeja had things in his favor in Match 22 against Kolkata Knight Riders. KKR had another quickfire start. They were 50/1 in five overs. Harsha Bhogle described the pitch at Chepauk as a road. Ravindra Jadeja’s spell, however, forced Bhogle to post a clarification tweet. And the mood must be similar in the KKR camp as well.
From 50/1 in five, KKR slid to 70/4 in 10 overs, scoring only 20 runs in the subsequent five overs. At this point, Jadeja’s figures, having come into the attack in the seventh over, were 2-0-8-3.
In his first over, Jadeja dismissed the two set batters - Angkrish Raghuvanshi and Sunil Narine. Raghuvanshi threw away a good start trying to reverse sweep the left-arm spinner. Four balls later, Narine was holed out at long-off. The duo had added 56 off 36 balls and within his first five balls, Jadeja had both in his pocket. In the next over, he added Venkatesh Iyer to his kitty.
Jadeja finished with 3/18 in his four overs with 11 dot balls and only one boundary. The 35-year old had his plans ready. He bowled two deliveries to Narine and kept the ball away from the batter’s reach. The first one was a wide but the latter resulted in Narine giving catching practice to the long-off fielder with a one-handed slog.
Against other batters, Jadeja kept the ball into their body to curb their bat swing. Both Venkatesh and Rinku Singh could only find singles against him despite a favourable match-up. The right-handers were bombarded with balls coming into the stumps.
Jadeja’s spell derailed KKR’s innings from 50/1 to 137/9 in 20 overs. From a road, the pitch transformed into a raging turner, resembling the Old Chepauk, which is a massive part of the folklore of Jadeja, the bowler in the IPL. Facing him on such tracks is like walking on a landmine. You don’t know what each spot will produce and are playing for your life.
Most of the successful teams in the IPL have a modus operandi, circling around the conditions at their home venue and a few vital players. In the case of Chennai Super Kings, it is the spin-friendly nature of Chepauk that makes Jadeja an indispensable cog in the Yellow Army.
But this is where the concern arrives. There is a big disparity between Jadeja’s bowling numbers home and away.
However, such are the dynamics in this league that home games are immensely important. Jadeja’s numbers at Chepauk lend him a God-like status in this team. After those three wickets, if there is anything Jadeja would like to carry in his pocket, it would be this Old Chepauk pitch.
