- Jadeja emerges as India's 'Most Valuable Player'
- He features as the Second 'Most Valuable Player' in the World after Muralitharan
Indian spinning all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja has been named as India’s ‘Most Valuable Player’ of the 21st century by Wisden. Jadeja has been extremely effective in the last two years, with the ball, the bat and with his fielding also.
Jadeja emerged as the second fastest Indian bowler to take 200 wickets in test matches, completing the task in 44 matches. His stats are just short of Ravichandran Ashwin who had scalped 200 wickets in 37 Test matches.
To evaluate the performance of the all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja, Wisden used CricViz, a detailed analysis tool in cricket.
As per the recordings of the tool, Jadeja has been named as the second most valuable player, behind Sri Lankan legend Mittiah Muralitharan.
“It might come as a surprise to see Ravindra Jadeja, India’s spin-bowling all-rounder, feature as India’s number one. After all, he’s not even always an automatic pick in their Test team. However, when he does play he is picked as a frontline bowler and has batted as high as No.6 – contributing to a very high match involvement,”
– Cricviz’s Freddie Wilde told Wisden.
“The 31-year-old’s bowling average of 24.62 is better than Shane Warne’s and his batting average of 35.26 is better than Shane Watson’s. His batting and bowling average differential of 10.62 runs is the second-best of any player this century to have scored more than 1,000 runs and taken 150 wickets. He is an all-rounder of the very highest quality,” he added.
In 49 Test matches Jadeja has played in, he has scored 1869 runs including a ton and 14 half-centuries. Jadeja’s only Test century had come against the West Indies in 2018 at his home ground Rajkot.
Jadeja has in total scalped 213 Test wickets, with nine five wicket hauls and one 10-wicket haul. He has emerged as the preferred spin option when India travels to SENA countries.