Dubai: Indian all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja has been extremely successful on the Chennai pitches and over the years, he has been a thorn in Australia’s flesh, producing some memorable magical spells. One of the reasons could be that he brings out the best against the best. The general trend to achieve success is to try something new, something flashy and pull out new a trick out of the hat, but the left-arm orthodox spinner does the opposite.
He keeps simple. Bowling a stump to stump line, Jadeja keeps the batters under pressure and wait for them to crack under pressure.
Jadeja said approached the ODI like a Test, maintaining a tight line and length rather than trying something extraordinary.
No experiment
“This was my plan, that I should bowl at the stumps and luckily the ball to Smith turned a little more,” Jadeja said explaining how he dismissed Australia’s topscorer Steve Smith (46).
“My plan was simple. I was thinking that this is a Test match bowling wicket, and I shouldn’t experiment too much because everything was happening in the wicket.
“So I was trying to bowl it stump to stump.”
Smith's nemesis
Jadeja bowled a beauty to dismiss Smith, who was trying to anchor Australian innings. The ball pitched on the leg stump and turned sharply to beat the bat and hit the top of the off-stump. Jadeja again reveled in the contest against Smith, dismissing the Austrlian for the 11th time in his career.
Buoyed by the success, the left-arm spinner dismissed Marnus Labuschagne and Alex Carey in the same over to reduce Australa to 119 for five, from 74 for two. The five-time champions never recovered from the stike to be all out for 199.
Rahul, who made an unbeaten 97, too echoed similar sentiments after forging a 165-run partnership with Virat Kohli.
Virat's words of wisdom
“Virat said there’s big help (for bowlers) in the wicket, and (we) just have to play proper shots and play like it’s Test cricket for some time and see where it goes,” said the wicketkeeper-batter.
“That was mostly the plan, and happy that we could do the job for the team.”
The small target meant both the batters could take their time to get a hang of the wicket when Australian pacers were breathing fire from both ends.
— With inputs from Reuters
