Ravindra Jadeja Getting Unfairly Blamed Despite His Heroics In Lord’s Test? News24 –

The Indian team played their third Test at the iconic Lord’s Cricket Ground against England and lost by 22 runs despite being the winning favourites. In the second innings of the third Test, India witnessed a complete batting collapse and Ravindra Jadeja was the sole warrior in India’s chase of 193 runs. The all-rounder remained not out at 61 runs and carried India till 170 but still he bears the brunt of criticism. Many cricket greats like Anil Kumble, Balwinder Singh Sandhu, Ravichandran Ashwin, Sourav Ganguly etc have highlighted his cautious approach and said that he could have batted more aggressively.

Blame On Jadeja Is Masking The Real Problem?

But one of the biggest questions that still lingers is where were India’s top, middle and tailenders during chase? All of them were sitting back in the pavilion while Jadeja was the lone warrior standing and handling the chase. It is also important to mention that England were absolutely incredible while bowling and picked on all of India’s loopholes to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Playing aggressively could’ve been an option when there was someone behind to handle the innings but Jadeja had little to no support and with the kind of weak tailenders India has, that option would’ve been extremely difficult to implement. 

Ravindra Jadeja has been one of India’s most reliable batters and he scored 942 runs, the most by any visiting batter at number 6 or lower in England after Garry Sobers.

Ravindra Jadeja Didn’t Get Support From Other End

India was at 112/8 when Jadeja came in to bat and playing aggressively would’ve been nothing but a big risk. He formed partnerships with Nitish Kumar Reddy, Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Siraj but didn’t get the stability he was looking for from the other end. In the first innings, Jadeja scored 72 runs and batted with a strike-rate of 54.96 but in the second innings he scored 61 runs and batted with a strike-rate of 33.70. In the first innings, Jadeja knew that the runs were on board and Indian batters had set a flow but was the situation the same in the second innings? The answer is NO. None of the top or middle order batters had given him the space to breathe and play freely. 

India’s Weak Tail

According to a report by Wisden, India has the weakest tail and with average partnership per dismissal for the last five wickets since 2024 being 18.93. It’s even more shocking to see that they are behind Pakistan, Bangladesh, West Indies and nowhere near Australia or England. It’s true that the tailenders are the ones supposed to carry the bowling responsibility but when the team needs them, can India’s lower order step up and bring in some runs? England also has Chris Woakes and Brydon Carse, with their averages being 25 and 21, respectively. On the other hand, Indian batters like Mohammed Siraj and Jasprit Bumrah have averages of 4.86 and 6.60, respectively.