Ravindra Jadeja - truly a rockstar!

Ravindra Jadeja has continued to excel in the multi-day Test cricket - with the bat in England and with the bat and ball in home conditions, and needless to say, in the fielding department.

Currently, he is head and shoulders above the rest of the field of his ilk. The left-hander is a mere ten runs shy of 4000 runs in the conventional form of the game; as an artful dodger with the ball, he has bagged 334 wickets, and he is three catches short of 50. The second Test against the West Indies, set to start on Friday at the Feroz Shah Kotla, New Delhi, should see him complete the batting landmark.

Seventeen years ago, his Rajasthan Royals skipper and mentor Shane Warne called him the “future rockstar” of Indian cricket. Has he not turned out to be one?

Unfortunately, the leg-spin wizard and thinker of the sports Warne is not alive; otherwise, he would have been the first to applaud the Jamnagar-based allrounder’s supreme efforts with the bat in the last five-Test series in England and in the first Test against the West Indies at the Narendra Modi Stadium. His fine century with the bat and four-wicket haul in the second innings won him the match award, juxtaposed against Mohammed Siraj’s seven wickets and splendid three-figure knocks by the supremely confident K.L. Rahul and the courageous Dhruv Jurel.

Clearly, Jadeja is giving himself a shot to reach the coveted mark of one hundred Test caps that has been achieved by the likes of Ravichandran Ashwin, Virat Kohli and his former teammate from Saurashtra, Cheteshwar Pujara, after the left-hander made his Test debut.

Fast bowler Ishant Sharma -he began his career in May 2007- also completed 100 Test matches in November 2021. Pujara began in October 2010, Kohli in June 2011 and Ashwin in November 2011. Jadeja is 14 Tests away from reaching the century of Test appearances, and he has to play the full World Test Championship (WTC) cycle (2025-2027) to touch the 100-Test feat.

He will feature in the starting XI against the West Indies in Delhi and also against South Africa in the two-Test series to be played at Kolkata and Guwahati in November. Jadeja will be looking to play one Test against Afghanistan, two away Tests each against Sri Lanka and New Zealand in 2026 and the five-Test series against Australia in January- February 2027, the last of the WTC cycle series for India.

Jadeja would have turned 38 in December 2026; he has remained lean and fit for most part of his 13-year-old Test career, and his skills have proved to be significant in home conditions (50 Tests, 2127 runs and 242 wickets at 20.65). His numbers alone make his continuity in the team almost certain, and someone like Rajasthan’s left-arm spinner Manav Sutar will have to show a lot of patience before getting a call from the national selectors. There are not too many with his versatile skills knocking on the door. Axar Patel continues to get support from the selection committee because of his value as a left-arm spinner and left-hand batsman. Moreover, Patel is only 31, and he would bring in the experience of playing Tests at home -all 14 so far - and the likes of Sutar and others may have to wait for a long time.

As of now Jadeja figures among the all-time best all-rounders (base of 3500 runs and 300 wickets) in Ian Botham, Stuart Broad, Imran Khan, Jacques Kallis, Kapil Dev, Shaun Pollock, Daniel Vettori and Ashwin. The other successful all-rounders in modern-day cricket have been Garry Sobers - considered the greatest of all - and Ben Stokes. Jadeja, Ashwin and Vettori are the only three spinners in this grand list and that too all are finger spinners.

Amazingly, Jadeja has not figured in 42 Tests after his debut against England at Nagpur. And that’s because Patel played in 14, Pragyan Ojha played in 5, and Shabaz Nadeem played in two. Injuries, off and on, have kept him out of action. He played only three Tests in 2022 when a knee injury kept him out for five months.

Jadeja’s best year has been 2017, when he took 54 wickets in ten Tests; this was after a 43-wicket haul in 2016 in nine Tests. He has been highly successful after the pandemic years; he took 33 wickets in 2023, 48 in 2024 and has taken 11 in seven Tests. With the seam attack in the forefront in England, he took only seven wickets in five Tests there at a high 72.43, which is far higher than his overall overseas average of 25.07 for his 92 wickets in 36 Tests. At home, he has 242 wickets at 20.65. He has featured in 50 Test match wins for India - 36 at home.

His century-unbeaten 104 - in the opening Test against the West Indies - once again proved his wherewithal with the bat. His effort enabled India to declare its first innings on the third day morning. He took four wickets in two spells, the first one of eleven.

But in England, he amassed 516 runs with five consecutive half-centuries, a superb display that helped India to compete and draw the series 2-2. With India opting to pick players with multiple skills for the lower middle order, Jadeja comes as an automatic selection in the playing XI. He is now the vice-captain of the Test team. So far, he has featured in 50 Test wins for India.