India vs England: We saw the best of Ravindra Jadeja yesterday

This was the best of Ravindra Jadeja. First, he turned around India’s innings with a blistering 61 from 37 balls. Then he helped scuttle England with 2 for 12 from seven overs. It was a complete performance and on this evidence, Jadeja should be a fixture in the ODI team and would even be better served batting higher up the order. Jadeja arrived in the 40th over with India struggling at 177 for 5. He started innocuously enough; nudges for ones and twos as he struggled initially to find his timing. He still managed to go at a run-a-ball, when he ran into James Tredwell and played out five dot balls before taking a single off the last ball. That, it turns out, was just the sighter Jadeja needed. A word from Dhoni followed in the next over before Jadeja ransacked Chris Woakes for 14 runs, hitting him for six and two fours. It was all timing. Jadeja is not a power hitter like Suresh Raina or Dhoni, but today he showed he can find the gaps with stunning regularity and even kept pace with Dhoni, who was putting on his own show of boundary hitting. [caption id=“attachment_589511” align=“alignleft” width=“379”]  Jadeja celebrates his half-century. PTI[/caption] The final flourish came after Dhoni fell for 72. Jadeja was left to face the last three balls of the innings against Jade Dernbach, who must have fancied bowling at Jadeja over Dhoni. Except Jadeja went 4, 4, 6 to end the innings, all of them the result of proper cricket shots. The first was a pull wide of fine leg, the second a flick off the pads and the third a bruising pick up over wide long-on. In the end 108 came from the last 10 overs, 68 from the last five. It was the sort of innings that one expects from Raina, who made a much more sedate 55 from 78 balls, and raises the question of whether they are both batting in the right positions in the batting order. While today’s innings from Jadeja showed he can be a threat at the death, it was also striking because of its rarity. This is not the norm from him. Jadeja is never going to be able to muscle the ball to the boundary from the start, like some of India’s no 7s have done in the past (e.g. Robin Singh). He is much more adept at knocking the ball around before possibly building momentum once he gets set. Raina, meanwhile, is more comfortable going for the big shots from the off, as he has proved repeatedly in Twenty20 cricket. He also has a poor conversion rate of 50s to 100s, having made just 3 centuries but 26 half-centuries from 156 matches. Today too, Raina threw away his wicket when he was well set. Having him switch with Jadeja will allow both of them to play their natural games. Jadeja will have more time to get in while Raina will not have to worry about playing the long innings and can go for his shots from the start. Raina has the power game that Jadeja lacks, while Jadeja can provide stability in the middle order, especially in Indian conditions, something this team sorely needs. Switching the two would therefore take the pressure off both of them and India might find they get more out of both of them too.