Jadeja: Defence Is Not My Game

One of the main reasons for India gaining the ascendancy in the Lord's Test was Ravindra Jadeja's fearless batting that put off the English bowlers on a lively pitch. Jadeja, whose stoic 98-ball 31 at Trent Bridge, Nottingham helped India draw the first Test, was a completely different batsman on Sunday, when his 57-ball 68 helped India post a 319-run target.

Sceptics had doubted Jadeja's skills as a Test batsman after the left-hander had failed to score a single fifty in 14 previous innings and had only given flashes of brilliance by scoring hardly enough 20s and 30s. The situation was also against him. Stuart Binny, promoted up the order ahead of Jadeja, had thrown his wicket away by taking Moeen Ali's spin casually. When Jadeja tried to step out to English frontline bowlers James Anderson and Stuart Broad on his first few deliveries, more than the fans the TV commentators had their heart in their mouths as 'living dangerously', 'playing too many shots' were the phrases being used to describe his initial demeanours with the willow.

"I just made my plan to go out there and play my shots. If I would have played defensively, it wouldn't have worked out for me. Defence is not my game. So I just decided that whenever I get a chance, I will play my strokes and back my natural game. I had that in mind before going out to bat," Jadeja said after the fourth day's play.

Jadeja's free-flowing nine hits to the fence helped his partner Bhuvneshwar Kumar gain confidence and notch up his third half-century. Together with Bhuvneshwar, Jadeja shared a run-a-ball 99-run stand that not just frustrated the English attack but helped pose a tricky target for their batsmen to get in just over four sessions of play.

On Sunday, it looked as if whatever Jadeja would touch would turn into gold as he struck with his very first ball, dismissing Sam Robson lbw. Jadeja says his introduction in the attack as early as seventh over was not an instinctive move by skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni but a ploy to target the rough outside the left-hander's off stump.

"No, everybody knew that there were footmarks in front of the left-hander and I was just trying to bowl in those footmarks. It was difficult for the batsmen to defend the ball when the odd ball was going straight and the odd ball was bouncing," he said.

What the viewers and the spectators at Lord's got to see for the first time was a wicketkeeper standing back to a spinner as Dhoni stood nearly four yards behind the stumps to Jadeja as the latter's faster ones were the balls which were bothering the batsmen. "MS asked me 'what do you think if I step back, you can bowl as fast as you want', so I said okay, let me try. And, it worked for us as few of the straighter ones got them in trouble and we almost got a wicket. It was our team strategy to ball like that," he said with a big smile.