Team India is blessed with a bunch of talented spinners. There have been many who have emerged and impressed with their unique skills. Where Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja rule in the longest format of the game, the likes of Yuzvendra Chahal, Kuldeep Yadav and Axar Patel have made the limited overs cricket theirs own.
But there is another spinner who has quietly made a name for himself. Kedar Jadhav, who started his career in the Indian team as a middle order batsman, is now a more than handy part-time off-spinner. Last year, in the ODI series against New Zealand, MS Dhoni’s experiment with Jadhav paid rich dividends.
The current skipper Virat Kohli has also made great use of Jadhav’s bowling in the recent time. In the last ODI against Australia, he bagged the important wicket of Steve Smith and ended up bowling 10 overs giving away 48 runs.
The off-spinner has a unique style of bowling. With a very short run-up, he delivers the ball with a round-arm action. The 32-year-old is short in stature and his arm goes very low while delivering which makes the ball skid. The ball doesn’t bounce much off the surface which makes it difficult for the batsmen to score off him.
Impressive stats as a bowler
Kedar Jadhav has picked up 16 wickets so far in the 17 innings he has bowled at an impressive average of 24.81 and an excellent economy rate of 5.17. These are brilliant numbers for a part-timer but Jadhav reckons he doesn’t know how he picks up his wickets.
When he was asked about his bowling, he answered, “Trust me, I really don’t know how I get my wickets. I’m just happy that I do my job whenever the captain asks me to. It has helped my batting as well and I am more confident because of my bowling.”
Jadhav’s international career began very late but in the limited opportunities, he has established himself in the Indian ODI unit. He stated that he is living his dream. “Obviously, it has been a dream since the time I started playing cricket, to play for your country and doing well. So I am living my dream, you can say.”
