Ravindra Jadeja responds to Matthew Wade’s chirping in Rajput style

It was another oscillating day of Test cricket where the Indians batted with determination for the major part but were stumbled to a deteriorated position in the last session via a beautiful display of off-spin bowling by Nathan Lyon. He picked up four crucial wickets post the tea interval to reduce the Indians to 248/6. At the end of the day, it was Ravindra Jadeja and Wriddhiman Saha who manned the crease for Team India.

After Lyon scalped Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, Karun Nair and Ravi Ashwin the Aussies were on top. Their bowlers had right through the day tried to get under the skin of the Indian batters and had succeeded to an extent. When Jadeja walked out to the middle wicketkeeper Matthew Wade wanted to make it difficult for the left-hander to survive the concluding moments of the day.

In the 87th over of the inning from Lyon who took the ball away from Jadeja while also extracting bounce from the Dharamsala wicket proved tough for him to handle. On the first ball he pushed it for a single, Saha gave him back the strike on the very next delivery but he couldn’t score of the 3rd and 4th balls that was enough for Wade to start chirping. As quoted by SportsKeeda the keeper said, “Very good in all conditions, Gary. Great in all conditions, Gary.”

He defended the 5th ball as well and Wade then shouted from behind the stumps, “Showed you can do it all conditions, Gary. You get wickets all over the world, mate. You’re not just a one-trick pony.”

That certainly got to Jaddu who saw the opportunity on the very next ball that was dropped short outside the off-stump, he rocked back in his crease and pulled the ball over long-on for a maximum. ‘It is stand and deliver’ for Jadeja an excited Ravi Shastri said.

Earlier in the day, Josh Hazlewood had opted for a similar tactic against Murali Vijay. The opener defended one that was coming into him and Hazlewood gestured to throw the ball at him after collecting it, Vijay smiled it off but edged the very next ball to the keeper and thus gave Australia an early breakthrough.

KL Rahul batted really well once again for his stroke-filled fifty but looked very unstable and tentative after the half century. Pat Cummins charged into him and bowled a barrage of short balls into his body and around the off-stump. After the first ball of the 41st over he also walked towards Rahul and exchanged a few words to which the batsman just responded with nods.

The next ball was a wide bouncer that could have easily landed into the wicketkeeper’s gloves but since he was involved in the heated moment with Cummins, Rahul decided to take on the delivery and tried to pull it but all he managed was a top edge and it safely landed into David Warner’s waiting hands at mid-off. This certainly looked like a strategy from the Aussies and worked in their favour as well.

Jadeja today completed 1000 Test runs becoming the tenth Indian to complete the double of 1000 runs and 100+ wickets. But more important than the feat or the six for India he stayed unbeaten for 16 at stumps with Saha also batting on 10 the scoreboard reads 248/6 as they trail by 52 runs.