The flat pitch at Pune offered India’s greatest test yet this World Cup. The difficulties increased when they lost Hardik Pandya in the ninth over, twisting his ankle trying to stop a ball off his own bowling, and escalated further as Shardul Thakur bled runs at the start of his spell. Bangladesh were cruising at 110 for 1 in 19-odd overs, and India’s bowling unit were in the hot seat. Remarkably, they restricted Bangladesh to just 256 when at one stage 320 seemed on cards.
There is no doubt that India have the bowling that can sparkle in conditions helpful for seam and spin. One question mark that remained was how they would do on flat tracks; especially the bowlers barring pacer Jasprit Bumrah and left-arm wrist spinner Kuldeep Yadav. The pair’s natural skill and variation can help them perform even in such conditions but what about others? With Bangladesh starting well, the question that is going to always hover until the end of India’s World Cup popped up: Why Shardul? Why not R Ashwin or Mohammad Shami? How are they now going to cope in the absence of Pandya?
Enter Ravindra Jadeja, India’s best bowler on flat tracks for a while now in Tests. With his ability to get the ball to skid on even on these pancakes, Jadeja always puts up a fight. It’s when used in the end overs on such pitches, as he is tried at times in T20, does he really bleed runs as he starts to fire them on a length and in the batsmen’s slot. But in this format, he used his skill, experience, and natural talent to outwit Bangladesh batsmen in the middle overs.
Now to that moment in the 20th over. For a brief while before that, Nazmul Hossain Shanto had already shown an alarming tendency to bat away from his body and pitching himself as an lbw candidate. Usually on the front foot, as he would take a tiny step forward and then stretch his upper body inexorably to wrist the ball – the bat would come across from an angle with a fairly big bat and pad gap. Kuldeep had tried but couldn’t squeeze one through to hit the pad. There were a couple of balls that rolled off the inner half of the bat before Jadeja fired in a skidder. Perhaps due to the pace and the skid, Shanto hurried back but couldn’t get any wood behind the leather. And was trapped lbw.
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Jadeja was generally bowling on a length or full to the other well-set player Litton Das but a couple of beefy hits in the 24th over would make him change. Das first walloped a full ball just over Jadeja, who despite the violence in the shot tried to catch. Next ball, a tad slower, was another boundary as Das unfurled the sweep shot to perfection. Jadeja’s course correction began; by and large, he began to get the ball to skid from a back of length. Couple of times, Das was beaten and began mistiming on the cut.
In the 28th over, did Jadeja sense that the impatient Das was about to rush down the track at him? For he squeezed out the ball between his thumb and fore-finger, and the ball cut a rather limpid trajectory, enough to induce Das to totally mistime his big shot and hole out to long-off.
This is Jadeja’s blessing and curse. With any other spinner with such an impressive record as he has in Tests, there won’t be any doubt in highlighting the dismissal as a cerebral work from the bowler. But with him, abetted by himself to an extent as he constantly downplays his arts into binaries of hitting the length and line, and by the watchers’ inability to spot special artistry, his art goes unscrutinised as well as it should. It’s a blessing as he always seems to bowl without the pressure of expectation hovering. It’s a curse as it isn’t appreciated as much. Whatever be the case, the squeezed out ball was enough to push Bangladesh into a tailspin.
It wasn’t just Jadeja of course as one by one, the others too chimed in. Unsurprisingly, Kuldeep’s wristy tricks had tied down the batsmen, and he was the first one to strike, removing a promising knock from the left-handed opener Tanzid Hasan (51). It was the leg break that just about straightened to beat the sweep shot and ping the pad in front of the middle stump.
Siraj too went for his go-to scrambled-seam ball and it worked on this surface. Mehidy Hasan Miraz’s dismissal would be credited to the spectacular leg-side catch from KL Rahul but that ball, even though its radar wasn’t right, did surprise Miraz by the amount it bounced that forced an awkward jab. Bumrah would return in the end to pick up two wickets with his mix of slower cutters and yorkers. Even Shardul, who leaked 16 runs in his first over as Tanzid sliced, whacked, and rushed out at him to wallop two sixes and a four, kept things tidy thereafter to end with figures of 59 for 1 from his 9 overs. But it’s unlikely that it will stop the critics. But that’s a story for another day. The takeaway from this match is how well on a flat pitch, India soaked up the absence of Hardik Pandya to bowl out the opposition for a below-par total.
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