In The Lord Of The Rings, shot in beautiful New Zealand, wizards use spells to conjure fire and create light.
In distant Kanpur, visitors from Middle Earth must have thought Gandalf had reappeared in the rather unlikely garb of an engineering graduate from Sri Sivasubramaniya Nadar College of Engineering.
Ravichandran Ashwin made magic as Tolkien’s Gandalf did, Mitchell Santner got one that pitched outside leg and took the outside edge of his bat, as he eased past 200 Test wickets.
I don’t know if spells have antidotes but New Zealand will have to find one very quickly if they have to save the series in Kolkata. And they will have to contend with a warrior too.
There is little that is subtle about Ravindra Jadeja. His bat is his sword and he brandishes it like his forefathers might have in grimmer battles.
And the ball, his arrow.
It follows a predictable if angry path till it hits the turf a little shorter than where the batsmen would like it to.
Then one deviates and keeps going straight, which is not normally too bewitching, except that few know which is which.
Four of his five wickets in the first innings were LBW with the batsmen presumably playing for turn. On a turner, the straight ball is often more deceitful.
They form a nice combination, the wizard and the warrior. And they help each other.
Ashwin admitted that Jadeja’s miserliness allows him to concede a few in search of a wicket.
It came as no surprise to me that Jadeja was man of the match because he knows the ways of his homeland well.
When he plays overseas, the pitch is not his ally but in India they are friends, spinning yarns and having countless cups of tea together.
As New Zealand discovered, and South Africa did under a year ago, he is a match-winner at home.
He does not do a lot, certainly doesn’t seem to (Ashwin alluded to his ability to stay within his capability) but in cricket, sometimes you only need to turn it as much as the width of the bat. And he gets wickets past the outside as well as the inside of the bat.
Much of his power comes from a powerful shoulder. It is the mightiest throwing arm I have seen in Indian cricket. Not many throw as flat from as far as he does.
At the bowling crease, the jerk is replaced by a smooth arc but the ball still arrives at the batsmen very quickly.
Occasionally he will let it hold in the air, only occasionally, as if to lull the batsmen into thinking he has time. Then the arrow will appear again, as his coach’s rocket ball did.
The simplicity gives him longevity in his spells and a spinner who can bowl long spells for very few is a captain’s delight.
In the second innings at Kanpur, while Ashwin took 6 for 132 at 3.71 runs/over, Jadeja’s 1-58 came from 34 overs at only 1.7/over I am delighted he is back to scoring runs. There were crucial moments against South Africa last year where he suggested he was quite at home batting on dusty tracks.
But in Kanpur he had, over the two innings, 92 from a mere 102 balls.
He must aspire to move up the order. There may not be too much space at the moment but it never hurt anybody to think bigger.
In course of time he will have to reinvent himself, with bat and ball, to playing overseas. But, happily for him, that isn’t something he needs to think about for a year!
tabla@sph.com.sg
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