Ravindra Jadeja
India all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja had a fruitful outing at the MCG as India thumped hosts Australia by eight wickets to level the four-Test series 1-1. Jadeja, playing his first Test of the series, picked up three wickets in Melbourne as the Ajinkya Rahane-led Indian camp came back strongly after their horror batting collapse of Adelaide Test.
Jadeja, in the first innings, scored his 15th Test fifty while adding 121 runs with stand-in skipper Rahane. The duo's century stand helped India in achieving a commanding 131-run lead over the hosts. The Jamnagar-born also became only the third Indian player to play 50 matches across all three formats of the sport.
The 32-year-old left-hander also had a brilliant white-ball series against the Aussies where he scored an unbeaten 66 in the third and final ODI, putting up 150 runs with Hardik Pandya for the sixth wicket. This was also the biggest 6th wicket stand in ODIs in Australia. Jadeja again came to the rescue in the first T20I at Manuka Oval where he notched up unbeaten 44 before he was replaced by Yuzvendra Chahal as concussion substitute.
After Jadeja's stellar display in Australia, former India wicketkeeper Deep Dasgupta has said that the all-rounder, at present, is in the same bracket as Ben Stokes. According to Dasgupta, Jadeja has done better than a lot of batsmen in the past two years.
"Jadeja replacing Virat Kohli in the 2nd Test was one of the things in my mind because of the way he has batted in the last couple of years. Generally, people think about Jadeja that he is a bowler who can bat, someone who hasn't capitalised much in Test cricket.
"But I always thought he has actually done better than a lot of batsmen in the last couple of years. He's getting runs across all formats, and also as recently as last year he was the world's top-ranked Test bowler," Deep Dasgupta told Sports Today.
Interestingly, Jadeja, currently ranked No.3 in ICC Test all-rounder rankings, has a better batting average than Ben Stokes and Shakib Al Hasan who are sitting at the first and second spot respectively. Since 2016, Jadeja has the highest batting average (46.29) and best bowling average (24.97) in the all-rounders' list. Stokes, currently sitting at the numero uno spot, has a batting average of 42.34 and a bowling average of 27.59 in the traditional format of the game.
"As of now the way he's batting he definitely is (in the same bracket as Ben Stokes). Even during the IPL I actually said why not him at No. 4 for CSK. He's got a couple of triple hundreds in domestic cricket, getting runs there is not easy," said Dasgupta.
"For Saurashtra, he bats at No. 4 but for India, he comes in at 7 or 8. Somehow I felt that he never took his batting seriously enough. In 2017 he was dropped from the side but and I think what kind of prompted him was the fact that he wanted to make himself more useful to the team, not just with the ball but with the bat as well. Because Jadeja, I know for a fact, always wanted to be a batsman," he added.
