Alastair Cook slams Ravindra Jadeja for incompetent batting at number 5 despite India's win in 4th Test

Former England captain Sir Alastair Cook has slammed India’s premier all-rounder across formats Ravindra Jadeja for his incompetent batting in both innings of the 4th Test which concluded yesterday at the JSCA stadium here in Ranchi.

Jadeja who was adjudged as the man of the match for his splendid all-round performance during the 3rd Test in Rajkot had a terrible outing in the penultimate Test in which the hosts tripled their lead over the visiting English team.

Ravindra Jadeja had smacked a match-saving full century in his home ground at the Niranjan Shah stadium in the 1st innings and his 204-run partnership with skipper Rohit Sharma who also smashed 131 had saved the day for the hosts who had got off to a crumbling start, losing 3 wickets for just 33 runs.

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“Batting at five there he struggled”, Cook opines on Jadeja’s position in the order

The Jamnagar-born cricketer was also monumental with the ball, collecting 7 wickets in the match including a five-for in the 4th innings as England failed to chase a mammoth total of 557 before eventually losing by 434 runs. However, during India’s 5-wicket win yesterday, Jadeja didn’t do anything significant with the ball as well as the bat. That intrigued Alastair Cook to suggest that Rahul Dravid-led team management demote Jadeja to number 6 or 7.

“Jadeja in particular showed probably why he should be batting a little bit lower. Yes, he can score runs but the ability, under pressure, to find that balance between attack and defense under pressure – pressure does funny things to you.” – Alastair Cook said via TNT Sports. 

“Ravindra Jadeja is a world-class all-rounder, but batting at five there he struggled in terms of taking no risks because he didn’t want to get out or trying to put a bit of pressure back on as a batter.” – Cook added. 

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“He might just have slightly better ball maneuvering”, Cook explains why Dhruv Jurel is better than Ravindra Jadeja

Upon seeing Dhruv Jurel’s defensive technique across both innings of the 4th Test where he had scores of 90 and 39*, Alastair Cook felt that Ravindra Jadeja should be going down in the pecking order so that Jurel himself and Sarfaraz Khan who are specialist batters, can come in and score runs.

Cook also felt that Jadeja’s 16 runs combined in both innings of the Test match was just some dead type of batting, claiming that Jurel displayed the right amount of balance in his batting and that he has better ball maneuvering.

“Jadeja was just dead-batting everything, there’s no chance of getting any runs whatsoever. So even when Jurel is defending because he’s so sharp when he’s tucking the ball on the leg side if it’s perfect he may get a run. That’s just the balancing act that slightly better players have – and I’m not calling Jadeja a bad player at all, he [Jurel] might just have slightly better ball maneuvering than Jadeja.” – Cook concluded. 

It will now be interesting to see if Ravindra Jadeja comes further down the batting order to facilitate Jurel and Sarfaraz in the 5th and series-concluding Test match in Dharamshala, starting from March 7.

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