We still remember the scene of March 26 in IPL 2024 when the home crowd gave Ravindra Jadeja a standing ovation during the Chennai Super Kings-Gujarat Titans match. Both the teams were face to face once again after the last season's final. In that final, Ravindra Jadeja was the hero in Chennai's victory on the last ball. Not only that final, Jadeja's contribution to the success of this team is also always remembered and that is why at 7:38 pm (8 minutes after the start of the match because Jadeja wears the number 8 jersey) he was given a standing ovation and applause. .

Jadeja, who has been in CSK since 2012, had till then scored 3749 runs in 174 matches and taken 152 wickets for the 5-time champion team. Not just a good bowler and batsman – he has contributed in every way in the team's game and even when Dhoni left the captaincy before IPL 2022, Jadeja was the number 1 contender. How was this experiment – ​​this is a different story.

The current reality does not match this entire discussion at all. MS Dhoni is still in the team but currently the team is not even in the top 4 in points (with 4 wins in 8 matches) and the race for play off is becoming difficult for them. In this situation, the player who is especially the target of criticism is Ravindra Jadeja. The team's trust remained with him in these 8 matches and that is why they promoted him even at critical junctures in batting, but the record is not justifying this trust. Till the matches of 23 April – 157 runs at 131+ strike rate in 6 innings, the magic that the team needed was not seen on special occasions. That is why this record did not work for the team. Even in 8 matches, he took only 4 wickets in 27 overs and if we remove the performance of 3-18 in one of these matches (against KKR), then he took 1 wicket in the remaining 7 matches.

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Take the April 23 match against Lucknow Super Giants – the team promoted Ravindra Jadeja (No. 4) by retaining Shivam Dubey while CSK needed quick runs with the early dismissals of Ajinkya Rahane and Daryl Mitchell. In reply, Jadeja scored 16 runs in 19 balls. Similarly, on April 5, he scored 31* runs in 23 balls at number 5 against Sunrisers Hyderabad. All this is happening in that season where it is raining on 4th and 6th and new records of hitting are being made. On March 31, against Delhi Capitals, he scored 21* runs in 17 balls and the bowling figure was 1/43.

It seems that Ravindra Jadeja is no longer the impressive player he is famous for – be it bat or ball, he has come out weak on many occasions in recent years. We are not even talking about bowling here – there is probably no newness left in his ball. Jadeja shows the image of a player who is just following the formalities of playing, without worrying about the match or the position of his team. If they had shown even a little bit of the right intention in the conditions in which they were playing, CSK's match win record in the season would not have been so ordinary.

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Jadeja is one of the few players who has been playing in the IPL since 2008. Today when MS Dhoni is close to retirement – ​​Jadeja is the senior of the team. He is currently 35 years old and fit but is missing the determination required to be a match winner. In this context, his poor batting in the 2023 World Cup final against Australia is also being remembered – then he scored 9 runs on 22 balls. Although generally good performances are remembered but this one was so bad that it is still fresh in the memory.

That's why many pundits say he hasn't made any real progress despite playing for so many years and is just a good cricketer – one who is good enough to hold down a place in the team but not exciting/reliable. If this is the situation in IPL then what will happen in international cricket? At this time his batting and bowling are so weak that even his fielding skills cannot save him. All this discussion before selecting the World T20 team is not good news – neither for Jadeja nor for Team India.

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