Ravindra Jadeja Outsmarted West Indies’s “Clever” Batsman

It was all too easy for Team India, in the bowling department, in the first ODI against the West Indies on Thursday at the Kensington Oval in Barbados.

Rohit Sharma won the toss, elected to bowl first, and before most of the Indians could finish their dinner, the West Indies were bundled out like a pack of cards for a lowly total of 114. This was an ODI match, lest you have forgotten. This was also an Indian bowling attack without all three of their first-choice pacers – Bumrah, Shami, and Siraj – and also the senior-most leg-spinner Yuzvendra Chahal was not picked for this match.

If you have been thinking why the West Indies failed to qualify for the World Cup 2023, with losses to Zimbabwe, Netherlands, and Scotland a couple of weeks ago in the Qualifiers, you don’t need to look beyond this shambolic batting performances to find reasons for that.

The West Indies batters lacked technique and temperament – opener Kyle Mayers‘ horrible shot in the third over of the match started the falling of the wickets, which ended with Kuldeep Yadav cleaning up the tail taking a four-wicket haul for only 6 runs in his 3 overs.

Pacers Hardik Pandya, debutant Mukesh Kumar, and Shardul Thakur, all three took one wicket each while left-arm spinner Ravindra Jadeja took three wickets in his bag. Only Umran Malik, who bowled 3 overs for 17 runs, went wicketless.

WATCH: Ravindra Jadeja knocks over Shimron Hetmyer who played a horrible shot

Left-handed batsman Shimron Hetmyer last played an ODI match for West Indies in July 2021. Apart from disciplinary reasons, another was his lack of temperament and inconsistency.

He seems to have not made much amends in the past two years as he played a horrible shot, trying to be a bit too cheeky – by shuffling outside the off-stump, going down on one knee and trying to pick up the ball and place it to fine leg boundary. But he tried it against Ravindra Jadeja, who is the master of bowling stumps to stumps.

It was a simple case of ‘you miss, I hit’, which had been simpler by this horrific shot from Hetmyer. Ravindra Jadeja is too smart to miss out on such gifted wicket-taking opportunities from the batter.

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