One of the reasons why the Indian team management has backed Kedar Jadhav for the No. 6 slot is his ability to clear the ropes. Irrespective of the format, he has always been a man who has hit loads of fours
Kedar Jadhav
India's Kedar Jadhav slams one to the fence during the Pune ODI against England on Sunday. Pic/AFP
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Pune: For an average cricket fan, Kedar Jadhav might just have arrived with a terrific hundred against England in the first ODI here on Sunday. For a slightly keener one, he had scored a hundred in an ODI in Zimbabwe too, and was a tough off-spinner to attack in the New Zealand ODI series in October 2016.
But a genuine one that has seen this aggressive right-hander for the last 10 years, the heroics on Sunday won't come as a big surprise. For a man who bats at an average of 50 and a strike rate of 105 in list A cricket (ODIs and domestic limited overs games), Sunday's 120-run knock was a kind of graduation to the next level.
One of the reasons why the Indian team management has backed Kedar Jadhav for No 6 slot is because of his boundary hitting ability. Irrespective of the format, Jadhav has always been a man who has hit loads of fours, and that's the main reason behind his strike rate being over 100 in 92 list 'A' games.
"His visualisation of the field and his gap sense is impeccable," explains former Maharashtra skipper Surendra Bhave, who has coached Jadhav. "The way he understands the angles from his batting position is a sublime skill. If the ball is hit with a certain amount of power in the gap, it will go for four; everyone understands that. Kedar just has that gift of hitting gaps time and again. Very rarely he hits a good shot to the fielder," Bhave adds.
As many as 52 per cent of his 3403 list A cricket runs come in boundaries (342 fours, 67 sixes). In first-class cricket, the boundary percentage rises to almost 62 (4945 runs, 673 fours, 60 sixes.) And the boundary percentage rose to 70 during his highest first-class score of 327 against UP's Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Piyush Chawla on a flat track at the MCA Stadium in 2012.
Jadhav's boundary-hitting ability has been rated so highly that once, when he was dropped for loss of form in Ranji Trophy, the Maharashtra selectors brought him back for the T20 tournament as an opener. "Even if he is not in great form, if he bats for first six overs, he has done his job as the score will be past 50 then," the selectors said then. Jadhav's gap-finding skill allows him to play proper cricket shots and get the job done with less risk.
From a regular middle-order Maharashtra batsman, Jadhav went to the next level by scoring 1269 runs, including six hundreds, in the 2013-14 Ranji season. That opened a lot of doors for this talented cricketer. He started to get more opportunities in India 'A' tours, Duleep Trophy, Irani Cup. And to his credit, Jadhav remained at the doorsteps of a full strength India squad for the next two and half seasons.
The way "Kedar backs himself" is another of his strengths, according to Bhave. "Imagine he is playing just a second or third game in a full strength India team (vs NZ); skipper Dhoni throws him the ball and he ends up bowling 10 overs and getting wickets.
"And since then, every time he has bowled he hasn't gone for much. Even on Sunday, four overs for 23, despite bowling in the slog overs, was a good effort," Bhave added. Consistency is the key word for the 31-year-old from here on, believes Bhave.
"He doesn't need to think about keeping his place in the side now.
"Instead, he needs to think about what he can do while playing for India. That's the kind of mindset he needs to have," Bhave explained.
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