iSport | For the Fans, by the Fans

Indian cricket has always been besotted with bowlers who can bat and batsmen who can bowl. The latest obsession to this party is Ravindra Jadeja. There was a point in time when the search for an all-rounder was so demanding that India experimented and tried its level best to stick the tag to the likes of Vijay Bharadwaj, Reetinder Sodhi, Sunil Joshi, Hrishikesh Kanetkar and Rohan Gavaskar. (They all did win matches for India but faded into oblivion before you could say ‘cricket’)

At that time, Ganguly, Rahul and Sachin were the mainstay and Yuvraj and Sehwag were yet not at their prolific best. Dhoni had not arrived. Which implied that our batting was not quite solid. So we needed a batsman. On the bowling front, Harbhajan was in wilderness, Nehra intermittently injured and inconsistent and Ajit Agarkar at his usual expensive self. There was only Zaheer and Anil to bank on. So we needed a bowler. Hence what better if you get someone who can do a bit of both?

10 years hence with the advent of Irfan, Yusuf, Gautam, Sehwag, Dhoni and the likes you would have thought that we are past that age. Yet, our selectors and our captain continue to befuddle us reposing faith in Ravindra Jadeja. Jadeja, in his current avatar is exactly what we do not need. We can boast of a pretty strong batting line-up now, even though in Sachin's absence, we still appear a bit wobbly and a formidable bowling line-up as well. So why go for a mixed-bag when there are options to choose a specialist bowler or a batsman as the situation demands?

It is also not that Ravindra is a phenomenal performer. Picture this – Ravindra’s batting average is 35.5 which is not enviable by any stretch of imagination and out of that, if one were to look at his performance against the big teams, namely Australia and South Africa his average is a measly 23 and 29 respectively. The strike-rate is good but nothing to wax eloquence about. Hence, he does not merit a place purely on his batting talent. 

Having a sneak peek on his bowling performance one is inclined to conclude that as a fifth bowler he is way too good but since when have we started playing with five regular bowlers? And even if we do, why not allow Pragyan Ojha or Amit Mishra to have a shot for a regular place. Both of them have shown sufficient talent to definitely deserve a thorough look-in. 

By choosing to ignore talents as these and continuously sticking to Jadeja, Dhoni is possibly keeping one chink in his armour when he starts on his quest to bring the coveted World Cup home next year. Considering that a certain 38-year old continues to carry on playing so that his mantelpiece is not devoid of the only trophy that adorns the other great cricketers of this country, the least Dhoni can do is have all the ‘right’ men forming the nucleus of the team. Tendulkar’s last shot definitely deserves a team of specialists and not of generalists.