Jadeja and the art of flying under the radar

A wry smile. That's all Steve Smith could offer. He had scored 46 runs off 69 balls by then, but his 70th ball – the first in the 28th over of the Australian innings – was a ripper that the batter could do nothing about. It left Ravindra Jadeja's strong fingers, pitched on a good length on middle stump and disturbed the top of off.

It seemed to encapsulate everything that makes the left-arm spinner tick – precise length, quick through the air and extracting just enough turn from a dry surface to breach the defense of a top batter adept at playing spin.

Off the second ball of his next over, it was the turn of Marnus Labuschagne, similar to Smith in his movements and mannerisms, to be undone by Jadeja. With the Indian spinners applying the choke on the Aussie batters in the middle overs, Labuschagne was trying to unsettle them by playing lap sweeps and conventional sweeps. He tried the latter against Jadeja, but the extra bounce induced a thin edge for a straightforward catch to 'keeper KL Rahul.

Next came Alex Carey, a left-hand batter. In modern-day cricket, there's an aversion among captains to bowl spinners who turn the ball into the batter. When the ball is spinning though, it's not quite easy to negotiate. Jadeja went around the wicket to Carey to cut down the angle and trap him leg-before for a two-ball duck.

In the space of ten balls, he had scalped three middle-order batters and derailed Australia's innings. And yet, there was barely a chant of Jadeja's name in a stadium that had almost filled up by late afternoon. Through the innings, you could hear "Boom! Boom! Bumrah", "Aaashwin, Aaashwin" and even Kuldeep Yadav's name reverberate in the stands, but there was nothing audible for someone who has played 158 matches for Chennai Super Kings and hit the winning runs in CSK's latest title win.

It perhaps sums up Jadeja's career. Despite excellent numbers for India across formats for many years – he is now 14 years into his international career with 67 Tests, 187 ODIs and 64 T20Is – Jadeja almost always goes under the radar. Jadeja may not mind, for the indifferent treatment only seems to get the best out of him. A recent example is this year's IPL, where his dismissals routinely brought cheers from CSK fans because they wanted to see MS Dhoni bat. Jadeja took it on the chin and delivered the cachet of an IPL crown for those very fans. Barring his experience of captaincy at CSK, which was bitter and short-lived, there's hardly been a blemish in his long stint with the IPL franchise.

On Sunday, on a turf where he has experienced many highs, Jadeja's performance (10-2-28-3) was deserving of all the plaudits. Not that you would expect anything less from him. In Chennai across formats this year, he has claimed 22 wickets in 88.1 overs at a strike rate of 24.05.

He is a master at plugging away with impeccable consistency on pitches that take a bit of turn. He doesn't vary his release points or tweak his action to the extent R Ashwin does. Nor does he have the flight and variety of Kuldeep Yadav. But what he does have in abundance is a firm hold on his line and length.

"Yeah, I play for CSK, I know the conditions in Chennai. When I saw the wicket, I was hoping to get two-three wickets, and luckily I got that. I was just looking to bowl into the stumps, because the odd ball was turning, so you never know what will turn and what won't. Not every ball was turning, I was just mixing the pace. The odd ball was slow through the air," said Jadeja during the mid-innings break.

His propensity to take setbacks in his stride also probably goes unnoticed. It shouldn't be forgotten that Jadeja was sent into 50-over exile after the 2017 Champions Trophy final loss against Pakistan in England. The criticism was that his bowling lacked bite in the middle overs, resulting in India's concerted push for wrist spin with Kuldeep and Yuzvendra Chahal. But Jadeja made his way back in September 2018, and has been a permanent fixture ever since even as Kuldeep and Chahal have been in and out of the side.

Along the way, his batting too has improved by leaps and bounds. He has developed into an ice-cool finisher and expanded his range of strokes, both necessities when you are slotted at No. 7 in white-ball cricket. If one was to scrutinise, his batting numbers in ODIs this year are below par – 189 runs in 16 matches at an average of 27 and a strike rate of 64.28. But India won't fret, for Jadeja has the game and the battle-hardened experience to turn it on with the bat in moments of crisis.

As this World Cup wears on and pitches become slower, Jadeja's impact as a bowler should only heighten. With the bat too, there are bound to be situations when he will step up. And hopefully, there will be a bit more acknowledgement of an all-rounder whose standards have seldom dipped.