Is Ravindra Jadeja the No. 7 Dhoni has been looking for in the series?
Mahendra Singh Dhoni doesn’t have to hang up his boots to tell us what he means to the Indian limited-overs team. He just needs to promote himself. For whenever he bats up these days – something he says he would like to do more often – Dhoni leaves a big hole in the lower middle-order.
Down the order, Ajinkya Rahane struggles to find ones and twos or even big hits. Suresh Raina was tipped to take the finisher’s baton from Dhoni. We were supposed to see this transition in the South Africa series. What we have seen from Raina so far is this: 14, 22, 3, 0, 0. In chronological order.
What exacerbates this predicament is the lack of a reliable all-rounder at No.7. Left-arm spinner Axar Patel, who occupies that slot, hasn’t looked the part. Theoretically a spin-bowling all-rounder, Axar doesn’t inspire confidence with bat. His arrival at the crease won’t make the commentators mouth “the last recognized batsman” cliché.
They would rather call it the beginning of a long tail. Dhoni said it, if not in so many words, on Sunday evening.
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“We are looking for batsmen to play at No.s 5, 6 and 7. Till they play there, we won’t know who is a good bet over there. And we are looking to give chances as well, so it’s a tricky one,” he said after the defeat in Rajkot, explaining why Rahane was dropped to No.6 in the third ODI.
“Jinx (Ajinkya Rahane) batted well at No 3, but Virat couldn’t score (at 4), this is something we will have to look at. But still the crucial slot is the No.7 slot, especially with Raina not scoring, it becomes a bit difficult. It takes time at international level, especially for people batting lower down.
“We are still looking for someone at no. 7 who can play big shots. And we also have to play five bowlers. As a bowler, Axar got hit in one of the games, but otherwise has been good.
“We all know he can bat, and with more games under his belt and getting to play a few more deliveries off the fast bowlers, hopefully he will keep getting better. Definitely at No.7 you need batsmen to play big shots. Otherwise the batting line-up looks very thin,” he said.
What India and Dhoni have been missing of late is Ravindra Jadeja, the precious all-rounder that he was before his shoulder injury. In theory, that Jadeja was almost as good a left-arm spinner as Axar is, at least in home conditions.
In his one-year long career, Axar has taken 27 wickets in 17 innings at an average of 26. Jadeja’s overall figures are 144 wickets in 117 innings at 33.49. On home pitches, however, the 26-year-old from Saurashtra becomes deadly, as his 68 wickets in 44 innings at 27.8 suggest.
And Jadeja is a much better batsman than Axar. The former averages 32.21 with bat, that latter merely 10.25.
An extended poor run with bat and ball since the England tour last year saw Jadeja get the axe this June. But if he could return to the Test team on the basis of his stellar Ranji performance – 24 wickets and two half centuries in two games – there is no plausible reason why Dhoni wouldn’t have been itching to have him back in the ODI and T20 teams. And you get the drift from the quotes that the Indian captain has given.
For now, however, the selectors have given Virat Kohli for the first two Tests what Dhoni probably wanted for himself in the last two ODIs.
