Is it time for India to look beyond Ravindra Jadeja in One-day International cricket?

There is a temptation to include the exuberant Yashasvi Jaiswal in the top 4 or pick Rishabh Pant over KL Rahul as the wicket-keeper for their left-handedness, but the team will fare best by not tinkering too much.

A greater deal of focus must rather fall upon India’s number 7 for the championship and beyond, behind Hardik Pandya at No.6. With sticky pitches playing base for India in Dubai, it is quite probable that they will have a few floating spin all-rounders in their ranks, preferably two that can bat left-handed. Three names immediately spring up.

Ravindra Jadeja in action. (FILE)

Ravindra Jadeja is a choice for experience. In the circuit for over a decade but yet to crack his permanent slot, Axar Patel has arguably been among India’s most fluent batters across the last two seasons in Asia. Washington Sundar, a left-handed bat, offers a different dimension from the other two with the ball. In all likelihood, one or two wrist spinners will also be part of the discussions.

The Jadeja question

Irrespective of the spin choices, India must zero in on a No.7 adept in moving through the batting slots in sight of a top-order crisis. Despite his inimitable presence for nearly 15 years, this is where India could finally draw a line on the “bits and pieces” of Jadeja in white-ball cricket. It is a call that can certainly wait for the conclusion of the Champions Trophy, but a ‘mini World Cup’ offers a timely opportunity to gauge Jadeja’s successors before blueprints are laid out for the 2027 edition.

With India’s top-order, involving heavyweights Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli, dominating the bulk of the scoring for over 10 years, the simpler game plan for the lower-order would have been to “smash”, fetch more boundaries in their limited bursts out in the middle. It is a role that brings the best out of Pandya, but Jadeja has seldom lived up to the job description.

India’s lower-order (7-11) batting effectiveness has been middling for decades, with the strike rate reading 84.47 since 2015 – fifth among Test-playing nations. It slips to seventh from 2020 onwards, with India’s lower-order aggregating 2,411 runs at an 81.67 SR. Jadeja has not distinguished himself from this average huddle in this period, holding an 85.06 career strike rate and 84.54 in the last five years at number 7.

The Saurashtra all-rounder is one of only three ODI cricketers to record 2000 runs at No.7, with New Zealand’s Chris Harris and Pakistan’s Abdul Razzaq achieving the mark throughout an entirely different white-ball generation.

A significant blip in Jadeja’s batting is his conspicuous lack of boundaries at the slot, leaving imprints of an additional accumulator at 7. Among the three all-rounders to make at least 500 runs at 7 since 2020, Jadeja’s 84.54 for 525 runs seems negligible when held against Glenn Maxwell (544 at 119.03 SR) and Scotland’s Michael Leask (703 at 122.90 SR). The defensive setting has swept into his bowling shares too.

International spin attacks have adapted to attacking methods, with wrist spinners dominating white-ball charts and trading runs for quicker counts in the wickets column. Jadeja’s bowling artillery has remained constant but it has left him with contrasting returns in two distinct white-ball eras within his career.

Jadeja’s last 51 wickets in ODIs across four years between 2019-23 came at the expense of 39.82 runs per dismissal. A wicket-taking delivery has landed almost only once every 48.9 deliveries at a 4.88 economy.

The defensive lines are intact but it is far from his best ODI year in 2013. He clocked 52 wickets at a 25.40 average and 35 SR that year, manoeuvering conditions in India, Zimbabwe, West Indies, South Africa and England where he topped the Champions Trophy with 12 wickets and was adjudged the Player of the Final.

25 spinners have picked up more wickets than Jadeja (39 wickets in 38 matches) since 2020, with Australian leggie Adam Zampa standing atop at 116 wickets in 58 games. Only two bowlers have held a poorer average than India’s 36-year-old tweaker (35.48) and only four possess a weaker strike rate (44.1).

It will be impractical for India to include both left-arm spinners in the squad. Despite having been around for 60 matches, Patel sits on the fence after having lost out to Jadeja in the home World Cup. With another Champions Trophy approaching, Jadeja’s credentials and ODI career are on tenterhooks too, floating on experience and hope over sheer performance.