Ravindra Jadeja hasn’t show the captaincy skills CSK fans were expecting: If you are a fan of history, you would that there have been countless instances where an exceptionally skilled army general was promoted to being the king with high hopes and somehow the state nosedived into dilapidation once he took over.
Also, without naming the individual, history has borne witness to a ruler who is old and could barely lift the sword and yet somehow under him, the state has flourished more than ever, kissing the golden age occasionally.
Now history is nothing but instances of real-life and cricket, of late has been a late addition to the historical curiosity of India, a nation where the sport is celebrated as the biggest revelry.
Getting back to the generals and kings’ discussions, one of the most common incidents of a successful player failing to exhibit leadership abilities when the nation needed a new face was none other than Sachin Tendulkar. Despite being a Picasso of the batting art, his flair as a captain pushed India further to the jaws of decadence.
However, surprising everyone, it was Sourav Ganguly, a rebel in the word’s truest sense, who took over the reins and ushered India to an era that would only go from strength to strength. Fast forward the clock by 20 years and let’s narrow down the margin from international affairs to a franchise extravaganza, as they say, history repeats itself.
Just before the latest edition of the IPL kickstarted, MS Dhoni, the longest standing skipper of Chennai Super Kings (CSK) handed over the captain’s armband to one of the finest Indian cricketers, Ravindra Jadeja, you can call him a general though.
Even though Dhoni’s creaking bones would make life a nightmare for the former CSK skipper, yet it is needless to say that his chiseled sensorium would still produce wonders to bring the Yellow Army to the light from the darkest pits of hell.
Now would you say that it is entirely Jadeja’s fault that CSK has lagged? No, it is not. The management is at fault on multiple occasions. First and foremost, they somehow overtly believed in bringing back the team of the last year, without caring for the fact that age isn’t just a number and this is not a knock-out fray where heroics in one or two games will lift you the trophy. It is a marathon league and even if you stumble in a game or two, you still keep on running, that’s the basic rule.
Did CSK manage to get the entire band back from the last year? Almost. Except for the man who led the charge for them, Faf du Plessis. With their starry opener no longer in the fold, whom did they hire? Devon Conway, a man who definitely has a reputation going into the shortest format of the game is not the dynamite that the South African opener was.
They relied overtly on Ruturaj Gaikwad but being candid, he is still young and just because he managed to bag the Orange Cap last season, that doesn’t indicate that he is going to deliver day in day out, especially when you take away one of the most reliable partners from him. The chemistry is gone, there is not a senior guy in the shed who can guide him and probably tell him that it is going to be fine.
These are just some of the mistakes that the management pulled off. Now coming to Ravindra Jadeja as a captain, well, he is a sharpshooter on the field but his strategies have been pretty questionable. Somehow his bowling maneuvers have backfired and the death overs have been leaking excessive runs.
The batting has collapsed in a couple of games already and in the one game where it didn’t, Ravindra Jadeja made a howler of bringing Shivam Dube into the attack where the batters are poised to hammer for more.
More importantly, somehow, Jadeja’s calculations are not just working out. Also, for a captain, he is somehow too soft and Dhoni’s iron-fist glare isn’t a thing for the electric all-rounder who is more into getting his team together in the lines of humour.
Ravindra Jadeja is also not the towering figure that Dhoni was, and hence when the game boils down to the cutthroat numbers, he is still to take long leaps. Even though it’s just three games in the tournament, Ravindra Jadeja somehow doesn’t seem to be the man for the captaincy job and before it is too late, maybe CSK should give it a thought and have a word with India’s best all-rounder at the moment.
