Kedar Jadhav, and the hard thing about cricket

Some people love to criticise cricket as a sport played by a handful of countries and one that has a lot of breaks during a game. They take potshots at cricketers’ supposedly lower fitness levels compared to other athletes.

These comments are okay up to a point, like when you want to rile up arrogant cricketophiles. In truth, many of the complaints against the sport are no longer valid. Few countries may play it but look at the population of some of those countries. The players are extremely fit too, as the game has become faster. As for breaks, they also exist in sports deemed more physically challenging than cricket, such as tennis and basketball.

The old chestnut about “playing five days without result” is the most irrelevant dig of all, as Test cricket is no longer the game’s most popular format.

Over and above everything else, cricket is an intrinsically difficult sport. Ask Kedar Jadhav. On October 7 in the IPL, walking in to bat when Chennai Super Kings needed a gettable 39 from 21 balls, Jadhav scored an embarrassing 12-ball 7. He conceded eight dot balls.

Cricket, and perhaps baseball, are sports that can make even professionals look like beginners. However bad a day Lionel Messi may be having, his foot will at least connect with the football. Novak Djokovic will at least hit most balls over the net even if he is off his game.

But in cricket there are days when the mere task of making decent contact with a ball seems impossible. Pros look like novices as one ball after another goes past them in the full glare of the public. It’s possible they even feel naked.

There is an old Hindi song called ‘Dhoondo dhoondo re sajna’ (Find, find my love). Sunil Gavaskar once used that song to describe the desperate struggle of a batsman who kept prodding at the ball and missing.

Jadhav was all ‘Dhoondo dhoondo re sajna’ in Abu Dhabi. CSK paid Rs 7.8 crore for him. On the internet there exists a cringeworthy video of him feeding MS Dhoni food with a spoon. Jadhav is not a bad player. Just about five feet five, the 35-year-old has put together a decent career, with 73 ODI appearances for India at an average of 42.09 and a strike rate of 101.60. But the way he batted against Kolkata Knight Riders, he should not be surprised at the talk that his place in CSK is in part due to his proximity to Dhoni.

On a lighter note, considering Jadhav is from Pune, the trolling he is being subjected to online is a taste of what Pune subjects others to. Pune and Punekars pride themselves on their curmudgeon quotient. Some of the city’s legendary ‘paatya’ (notice boards) include gems such as, ‘Please see your dog does not defecate near the gate, else its owner will be made to do the same’.

Back to cricket. A few days ago, Rahul Tewatia went through the same helplessness at the crease as Jadhav, that fundamental struggle to hit the ball. Like Jadhav, he too was first tied up by spin bowling. But when Sheldon Cottrell came on he could break the shackles. Jadhav couldn’t do that when he got respite from mystery spinner Varun Chakravarthy and Andre Russell came on. The 1.85m Russell jammed Jadhav with 140kmph deliveries at his chest. With his nuggety size, Jadhav looked like Chhota Bheem taking on a giant in Russell. But on this day Bheem hadn’t had his laddoos.

What does a batsman do in such a situation? How does he escape the choking grip of the bowler around him? With a mix of intuition, homework and observation, as former India opener Aakash Chopra once wrote in a piece on playing swing bowling.

“Even the most skilled batsmen in the world rely on their instincts and years of practice to gauge where the ball will end up when it reaches them,” Chopra wrote on cricinfo.com. “There is no device to tell you the ball will move ‘x’ inches in the air after release and ‘y’ amount after pitching. Be watchful of subtle changes in the bowling action, wrist and seam position, and the bowler's use of the crease.”

Chopra was speaking specifically about facing swing bowling, but some of it applies to all types of bowling.

In addition to theory, batsmen prepare themselves in the nets by hitting to specific parts of the ground in simulated death over drills. Some also switch to a lighter bat for the end overs.

As a seasoned player, Jadhav would know all this, but the knowledge then has to be backed by execution. And for that a player needs ability. As Virat Kohli said a few years ago, “I don't mind playing run-a-ball for the first 20-25 balls because I know that I can get 40-45 runs in the next 15 balls. Now I believe more in my ability to hit sixes or pick gaps for boundaries in the final overs."

Do I have that ability? That’s the question Kedar Jadhav has to ask himself. And please, no feeding food to teammates.