Jadeja topples Jharkhand in under two days

After every bowling innings this season, Ravindra Jadeja takes the ball from the umpire. He takes it with him, writes his figures on the ball, and keeps it with him. Until Friday the three balls he had collected read: Saurashtra v Tripura 27/13/27/6, Saurashtra v Tripura 25/11/45/5 and Jharkhand 20/7/71/6. The date is mentioned along the seam. He says he will proudly keep them in the new house he builds in Jamnagar, to go with the palatial farmhouse he has there already. He has another ball for that collection: Saurashtra v Jharkhand 25/5/55/7.

This one set up a relatively easy target of 86 for Saurashtra, which they knocked off through Sagar Jogiyani and Cheteshwar Pujara. Yet another win, brought about single-handedly by Jadeja, has given Saurashtra 13 points from two matches, as they already take giant steps towards quarter-finals qualification from Group C.

Jadeja has taken 24 wickets in four outings and in all four innings he has bowled unchanged. These are long spells to be bowling in the dry heat of Saurashtra, but this is what Jadeja's cricket was built on, this is what endeared him so to MS Dhoni, who knew just how to get the best out of Jadeja. He has scored 91 and 58 on the same tracks lest it is pointed that these pitches are tailor-made for him. A telling comment was made by Jharkhand opener Ishan Kishan, who made a sparkling 87 on the first day, to give Suarashtra a brief scare. "We were dying to get one loose ball," Kishan told ESPNcricinfo. "Every run we scored we had to manufacture, whereas we gave them quite a few loose balls to score off."

This is generally the difference, every newcomer to Tests says, between first-class and Test cricket. Good Test bowlers hardly give you loose balls. The first real loose balls Jadeja bowled all match was when his job had arguably been done. He had taken five wickets out of Jharkhand's seven for 90-odd, and gave Ishank Jaggi two short balls to score boundaries off. He was filthy with himself when he took his hat from the umpire at the end of the over. He was so disappointed that he smashed the hat into his thigh.

By the time he came back for the next over, Jadeja was deadly accurate again. The pitch did the job for him. These were Group C batsmen who don't have the patience and technique to play Jadeja out. The selectors will obviously keep that in mind when they select the Indian team. But on a pitch such as this - turning and turning quite sharply, quite similar in a way to the kind India have been asking for home Tests - Jadeja is deadly. He doesn't flight the ball much, not letting the batsmen get under it, hardly provides a short ball, and every once in a while turns one square.

That's exactly how Jadeja operated in Rajkot. Jharkhand began the day, and their second innings, needing 37 to make Saurashtra bat again. Against the pace of Jaydev Unadkat and Chriag Jani, Kishan and Ramiz Nemat, the openers, looked good. Jadeja then grabbed the ball in the fourth over never to leave it for too long again. Wearing his jersey inside-out - more carelessness than superstition because he had corrected it in the second session - Jadeja turned Jharkhand's innings upside down.

He played mind games with Kishan, who was sprightly on his feet in the first innings. Kishan knew he wasn't going to get anything tossed up, and he kept looking to go back. When he saw one that was flat enough to let him go back, he went back to cut. The ball was slightly fuller than he expected, stayed slightly low than he expected, and bowled him. Jharkhand were still 10 runs behind when this happened. It was the game there, unless Jadeja was going to have a shocker.

No shocker, though, was to be had. He took the other two big wickets too, bowling Saurabh Tiwary through the gate with a flighted delivery after stifling him with quick deliveries and having Jaggi caught at silly point with one that jumped off a length.

One of the biggest contributing factors to Jadeja's loss of form as a bowler was the shoulder injury he sustained late last year. The shoulder is a key component of his bowling. He generates the pace and the fizz through that shoulder. It has been missing for a while now. Jadeja says it is yet to be as strong as it used to be, but you could see here he was putting in more of it as compared to two weeks ago on flat pitch in Bangalore, against Bangladesh A. Having said that, when you are in your comfort zone, and when there is a wicket around the corner every time, everything begins to fall into place. Whether Jadeja will be able to do this, or even half of this, against better opponents on better pitches is the tough call selectors have to make now.