Ravindra Jadeja, at the end of Day 1 of the Mumbai Test against New Zealand, backed his Indian teammates after the hosts lost a flurry of wickets to end the day on 86/4 while trailing behind by 149 runs. Jadeja, who bagged a fifer to help India restrict the visitors to 235 runs, couldn’t comprehend the proceedings as the Men in Blue lost Yashasvi Jaiswal, Mohammed Siraj and Virat Kohli 15 minutes before the stumps as India ended the day on the backfoot.
“I didn’t even get the time to comprehend. Everything happened in 10 minutes,” Jadeja told reporters while breaking into laughter as he tried to keep the mood light. “But it happens. In a team game, you can’t blame anyone. Everyone makes small mistakes. But the remaining batters will have to stitch small partnerships. We will have to do as much as we can with the bat. Only then, the second innings factor will come into the play. When you’re down 0-2 in the series and such things happen, people say you panicked and you made a mistake. But when you keep winning and when you’re ahead 2-0, then everyone says, it’s okay, it happens. When you’re down in the series, then these things always feel big. In a team game, if mistakes happen, then the batsmen who are coming tomorrow, we will do as well as we can to get close to their total or even take a lead.”
Jadeja, who has had a mediocre series with the ball along with Ravichandran Ashwin, bounced back to form as he bagged a fifer on what was a tricky surface to bat on. Reflecting on his performances in the series, Jadeja said: “I think as an individual, it wasn’t that special in the first two matches. Because sometimes you are 0-2 down, it takes time for you to bounce back. But since the first Test, we didn’t play as well as we should have from the very first innings. Even in Pune, in the first inning, we didn’t bat that well. The same mistake we made in the first test, we repeated in the second as well. From there, we have been behind in the game and series.”
With the top order not performing to expectations, India, in recent home Tests, have seen the pressure falling on the shoulders of lower middle-order. While the lower order has bailed the Men in Blue quite a few times in the recent past, New Zealand didn’t allow that to happen in the ongoing series. When asked whether there is extra pressure on the lower middle-order to perform with the bat, the all-rounder said: “There is always pressure. It’s not like when the top order doesn’t play well, there is pressure on the lower order, and when the top order does well, there is no pressure on the lower order. When we don’t score after the top-order scores, we’ll anyway be asked why we don’t. When you are playing, you can never be relaxed. You have to improve your game whether you are ahead in the series or behind in the series.
“We still have a chance in this match. We still have a chance in this match. It’s not like we are away from the match. So hopefully, we will bat well tomorrow.”
India have already lost the three-Test series but are fighting to save a white-wash, their first at home since 2000, while also aiming for crucial points in the World Test Championship Cycle. Jadeja has been an integral part of the unbeaten run, which lasted for 12 years. When asked about the series defeat, the experienced campaigner said, “The first thing is that I was afraid of this. For me, I thought that until I play in India, I don’t want to lose a single series. But this has also happened now. Whatever I am afraid of, it happens suddenly,” Jadeja said before adding, “Nothing surprises me anymore. We have raised our expectations so high after we didn’t lose a single series for 12 years. And in 12 years, I think there are 5 test matches in total that we lost where I have played. As a team, it is a good achievement. But when you raise your expectations so high and when you lose a series, it gets highlighted even more. As a team, it is a learning lesson that what positive we will take from this and get ready for next challenges.”
Jadeja bounced back to life as the ball turned and bounced sharply. He even extracted 7.9 degrees of turn from the Wankhede track. Did he tweak anything here from the last two Tests? “I didn’t change much. There wasn’t much bounce in Pune. Here, there was a little bounce and a little turn here. Sometimes it happens that you don’t even get a wicket in the turning pitches,” Jadeja quipped. “Sometimes it happens. Sometimes you don’t even need a lot of turn to get wickets. It is also a matter of luck. I haven’t got a wicket in a lot of such matches where the ball is turning sharply. And sometimes I have picked plenty of wickets on pitches that offer little turn.”