India's left-arm orthodox spin twins give them a good headache to have
Jadeja dominated England’s batters, Axar disrupted their spinners. It added up to a fine match-winning combination in Nagpur, but what if they have to pick between them at the Champions Trophy?
Karthik Krishnaswamy06-Feb-20252:41
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From a philosophical point of view, umpire’s call is among the most fascinating things in cricket. It lends the same ball a Schrodinger-esque duality: it could, with equal validity, be out or not out.Ravindra Jadeja got Joe Root lbw on Thursday afternoon with one such ball, and this one came with an extra layer of duality.It was a classic Jadeja dismissal, the batter beaten on the back foot by the ball turning less than expected and hurrying onto him, and ball-tracking suggested it would have gone on to clip the top of the bails. At the first level of duality, it could have been out or not out, depending on what umpire KN Ananthapadmanabhan thought of it.Related
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At a level beyond that, this was a ball that almost had to be an umpire’s call kind of ball to give Jadeja the chance of beating Root in this way. It was the shortest possible length that could still threaten the stumps, and perhaps the fullest possible length that could make Root go on the back foot. Any shorter, and the ball would likely have bounced over the stumps. Any shorter, and Root may have had more time to adjust to the lack of turn. Any fuller, he might have elected to get on the front foot.This was umpire’s call, and it could have been not out on another day. But in order to be out, it kind of had to be umpire’s call.This was the 15th ball Jadeja had bowled in this match, his first ODI since the World Cup final of 2023. And he was already all over it. This was the fourth time he had dismissed Root in ODIs, and the 12th time across formats. Jadeja has now dismissed Root more often than any other batter. And no spinner has dismissed Root more often.Soon after this lbw, the broadcasters played back footage from the Kochi ODI of 2013. This was the first time Root had ever batted in the format, and he made 36 before being bowled by the curly-mopped, 2013 version of Jadeja. Different hairstyle, same bowler: a skidder sneaking past the inside edge as Root unwisely aimed square of the wicket with an open bat face.
Axar and Jadeja are both allrounders who bowl left-arm orthodox and bat left-handed, but they’re very different in some ways. Jadeja is a more rounded bowler, and he’s scored Test-match runs all over the world, but in any format, in situations where you want one of them facing spin, it’s likely Axar you’d turn to.
All these years later, Root was vigilant enough to try and play him down the ground, but sometimes that makes no difference when Jadeja is hitting his lengths, attacking the stumps, and getting variable turn off the surface.On Thursday in Nagpur, Jadeja put on a masterclass of stump-to-stump bowling and finished with figures of 3 for 26 in nine overs. Bowling from around the wicket to both the right- and left-hand batters, he kept the stumps in play in hypnotically relentless manner, narrowing the batters’ shot choices, giving them a judiciously curated list of scoring options. If they wanted anything beyond that, they’d need to take chances.This was the kind of ODI pitch where there was turn, but you needed to give the ball a rip to find it. The kind of pitch where batters worried about both edges of their bat while facing Jadeja, but not necessarily when they faced Axar Patel.Their respective abilities to extract turn from this pitch, and the specific geometries of their bowling styles, also influenced the lines Jadeja and Axar were able to bowl. Axar also bowled from round the wicket to England’s left-handers, but with his wider arm at release, and with the smaller amounts of turn he was able to generate, he had less of a chance of hitting the stumps with balls pitching in line with the stumps.3:18
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And this opened up more scoring areas for England’s batters. Nowhere was this more apparent than in how often, and how effectively, they were able to sweep India’s spinners. They played variants of the sweep or reverse-sweep 10 times against Axar and scored 15 runs without losing a wicket. They also scored 15 off six such shots against Kuldeep Yadav’s left-arm wristspin.Against Jadeja, however, it was a different story. They attempted three sweeps, scored one run, and lost two wickets: Jacob Bethell lbw and Adil Rashid bowled. To borrow from : come at the stump-to-stump king, you best not miss.It’s been nearly 16 years since his ODI debut, but Jadeja endures.The remarkableness of this feat became more apparent as the day wore on, and India got into their chase of 249. It became especially apparent when they lost their third wicket with 113 on the board, and sent Axar in.This was precisely the sort of situation that makes Axar so valuable. There was just one left-hand batter in India’s regular top six, and the situation called for a left-hander, with the legspinner Adil Rashid beginning to find generous amounts of turn and the left-arm spinner Bethell having just dismissed a dangerous Shreyas Iyer in Jadeja-esque manner, lbw sweeping a stump-to-stump ball.Axar and Jadeja are both allrounders who bowl left-arm orthodox and bat left-handed, but they’re very different in some ways. Jadeja is a more rounded bowler, and he’s scored Test-match runs all over the world, but in any format, in situations where you want one of them facing spin, it’s likely Axar you’d turn to.Axar Patel did the job with the bat•MB Media/Getty ImagesAnd you soon saw why. The second ball he faced from Rashid was dangled well outside off stump but dropping onto a dangerous sort of length, and Axar took on the invitation. The length made him reach for the ball, but he used his long levers expertly to control his slog-sweep, prioritising placement – there was a deep square leg but no deep midwicket – over power.Soon after, facing his eighth ball, he saw another opportunity for the slog-sweep, with Bethell on this occasion tossing one right up in his arc. This time he went with a full, unfettered bat-swing and cleared the boundary with ease.And just like that, Axar was well into his job of disrupting England’s spin plans. By the time he was bowled by a ripping Rashid legbreak, he had scored 52 off 47, put on 108 with Shubman Gill for the fourth wicket, and taken England’s spinners for 33 off 30 balls.There couldn’t have been a better illustration of the quality, and specific qualities, of India’s two left-arm-spin-bowling allrounders.This, of course, was always set up to be a game for both Jadeja and Axar: a pitch that allowed India to play three spinners, and an opposition line-up, dominated by right-hand batters, that allowed them to play two left-arm orthodox spinners.There will likely be pitches and oppositions during the upcoming Champions Trophy that will allow India to pick this combination again. There may also be times, though, when they might have to leave one of them out: either to pick Washington Sundar (or possibly even Varun Chakravarthy) or an extra fast bowler.Who do India play then? The better bowler or the more versatile batter? To quote once again: it sounds like one of them good problems.