Ravindra Jadeja picked up four wickets against Bangladesh. (Source: AP)
It had been 14 months since Ravindra Jadeja last played in a 50-over match for India. It had come against West Indies in July 2017, where the left arm spinner registered figures of 10-1-27-0. Since then, his place, and that of R Ashwin, in the ODIs has been taken over by the duo of Kuldeep Yadav and Yuzvendra Chahal. On Friday, Jadeja returned to the fold at the Asia Cup due to injury to Axar Patel. Almost immediately, Jadeja made an impact against Bangladesh in Dubai with figures of 10-0-29-4. With wickets of Shakib Al Hasan, Mushfiqur Rahim, Mohammad Mithun and Mosaddek Hossain, Jadeja left Bangladesh reeling and the middle order in complete tatters.
Jadeja coming in for Pandya instead of the like-for-like replacement in Rajasthan allrounder Deepak Chahar worked wonders for India after Rohit Sharma won the toss and opted to field.
Shakib became Jadeja’s first victim when the Bangladesh batsman went for the sweep to a length delivery outside off. However, the sweep went comfortably into the hands of Shikhar Dhawan at square leg. Next to fall was Mithun. In typical Jadeja fashion, he got the ball to skid through and Mithun with his long stride forward was caught pad first.
Jadeja then sent Mushfiqur packing with the Bangladesh batsman paying for his lack of patience. With runs hard to come by in front of wicket, Mushfiqur tried to reverse sweep but only ended up finding Chahal at short third man.
‘Jaddu’s’ day was complete with the wicket of Hossain. Mosaddek scored a paltry 12 runs from 43 balls and in sheer desperatation went for a slog sweep and a smart Jadeja slowed down the pace to get the toe end of the bat for MS Dhoni to grab behind the stumps.
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