Ravindra Jadeja should've played earlier in the series: Harbhajan Singh
Jadeja has played to the best of his ability thus far in India's grace-saving encounter.
India have already lost their five-match Test series against England and are playing the fifth and final match at Kennington Oval in London. The encounter is nothing, but a mere dead rubber and the visiting team decided to make some alterations to the playing eleven. Apart from giving Hanuma Vihari his maiden international cap, they also roped in Ravindra Jadeja.
The Saurashtra-born all-rounder was drafted in for Ravichandran Ashwin, who has been suffering from a hip injury ever since the third contest at Trent Bridge in Nottingham. Prior to the ongoing match, Jadeja had to warm the benches as the Indian team management preferred Ashwin and Chinaman bowler Kuldeep Yadav over him in the previous four matches of the series.
Jadeja dominates the Brits
However, he has played to the best of his ability thus far in India’s grace-saving encounter. In England’s first innings, the left-arm tweaker finished with a four-wicket haul and was his team’s standout bowler. The 29-year-old picked up the wickets of Keaton Jennings, Ben Stokes, Jos Buttler, and Stuart Broad to show his stupendous prowess as a bowler.
Thereafter, he churned out a superlative knock of 86 runs from 156 deliveries in India’s innings, laced with 11 boundaries and a monstrous six over James Anderson’s head. At one point in time, the visitors were reeling at 160/6, but Jadeja showed trod a calm and collected approach to propel his team’s score to 292 and bring down the deficit to 40.
In the meantime, Harbhajan Singh, who is currently serving a commentary stint with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), reckons that Jadeja’s inclusion in the erstwhile matches could’ve made a difference for India. He took to Twitter and wrote, “Well done @imjadeja should have played earlier in the series things could have been different.. 4 wickets and a brilliant 50.. keep going pal.”
Here is Harbhajan’s tweet
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