The final day of the Headingley Test offered a throwback to the 1987 World Cup semi-final between India and England at Wankhede. It was a game where Graham Gooch had swept India out of the tournament, scoring a match-winning 115. Maninder Singh and Ravi Shastri were at the receiving end of his ‘broomstick’ aggression that worked wonderfully well for England. Thirty-eight years down the line, Ben Duckett was doing it in reverse — reverse-sweep to be precise — on a Day 5 pitch against Ravindra Jadeja.
A stat put out by ESPNcricinfo reveals that England batters played 39 reverse-sweeps against Jadeja in the first Test. The left-arm spinner returned match figures of 1/172 from 47 overs. He bowled only five maidens. In the second innings, his economy rate was 4.33, which is expensive by his standards. Not only did Jadeja fail to make use of the rough, he was tactically outsmarted by Duckett. Belatedly, when the course correction was done by taking the line wider, the hosts were in complete ascendancy.
Jadeja has been a great servant of Indian cricket — a world-class all-rounder in his own right home and away. But at 36 years of age, has Father Time started playing peek-a-boo? Not much should be read into his dropped catch to give Duckett a reprieve in the first innings. It was an aberration. But Jadeja the all-rounder is seemingly on the wane, especially on the road.
Rewind to the series Down Under last winter, where Jadeja didn’t quite pull his weight — 135 runs in three Tests at an average of 27.00 and just four wickets at an average of 54.50, and an economy rate touching three-and-a-half. Before that, in the home series against New Zealand also, where India suffered a humiliating whitewash, Jadeja wasn’t on top of his game as a batter. He made 105 runs in three Tests at an average of 17.50. In Leeds, Josh Tongue castled him for 11 in the first innings, while in the second, he ran out of partners.
Compare this with Jadeja’s all-round exploits from 2020 until the first half of 2024 — a period when the southpaw had scored 1,192 runs in 24 Tests, including three hundreds, at 37.25. He took 83 wickets, including four five-fors, during that phase at an average of 22.84. His presence in the team was the reason why India could play with five specialist bowlers, be it under Virat Kohli or Rohit Sharma.
Jadeja in decline has sort of forced India to move away from that template, be it the final Test against Australia in Sydney — three fast bowlers and three all-rounders — on a spicy surface or the first Test against England on a flat Headingley pitch. The tourists couldn’t play Kuldeep Yadav and opted for Shardul Thakur, probably knowing that the latter would be under-bowled. Thakur is the only lower-order batter in this side who can hold a bat, but as it turned out, omitting Kuldeep was a big selection error.
The left-arm wrist-spinner is India’s second-best wicket-taking option after Jasprit Bumrah and the team management knows that. But a porous lower-order prompted them to go on the defensive. Both Shubman Gill and Gautam Gambhir, the captain and the head coach, have spoken about the importance of taking 20 wickets to win a Test. But the reality is that they are going into picking the playing XI with hands tied behind their back.
“Are we seeing the decline of Ravindra Jadeja?” Brad Haddin, the former Australia wicket-keeper recently said on the Willow Talk podcast. “I mean yes, he is effective in Indian conditions and how hard it is to play left-arm spin in India. But I don’t think he is the best option to have in the team spin-wise (in England).”
Easier said than done, for India still don’t have a like-for-like replacement for Jadeja. Washington Sundar is in the squad, but the team management is seemingly not yet convinced about his all-round abilities, especially as a bowler, unless the pitch is a Bunsen.
But somehow, India have to play Kuldeep. They have to risk losing a Test to win it.