Recalling Jayant Yadav
The spin all-rounder went under the radar but was crucial to India beating England in 2016.
It’s probably the most difficult ball to deliver but Jayant Yadav nailed it. A ball just flat and quick enough in trajectory to play on the backfoot but yet full enough in where it eventually pitched, got England’s best batsman Joe Root out LBW in the 2nd innings at the Wankhede. Till then, Root was sweeping Ashwin and Jadeja like a dream. He was batting 77 and helping England eat into the Indian first-innings lead quickly. Near the stumps on Day 4, the visitors could ill-afford the wicket of their potential saviour. Had Root went through unscathed and resumed batting on the last day, it might have been a different ball game. But that absolute peach and the wicket perfectly summed up Jayant Yadav’s debut Test series: he was there shutting down any window of opportunity for England.
When India hammered England 4–0 in 2016, it was perhaps the ideal scoreline for the series, perfect reflection of the gap in quality between the two sides in these conditions, especially on the bowling front. Only once in that whole five-match series were England able to dismiss India twice. They didn’t have Ashwin and Jadeja, India did, nor did their pacemen get as much out of the tracks here as Umesh and Shami did. But whenever still they got a sniff, in Vizag, Mohali and Mumbai, it was Jayant who came to the fore for India and reinforced the hosts’ dominance, both with the ball and the bat.
Jayant didn’t play the first and the last Tests of that series in Rajkot and Chepauk. In between, he took 9 wickets at an average of 29.56 and scored 221 runs at 73.66. The numbers, though, won’t tell us the entire story. In this write-up, we’ll focus on the quality that Jayant brought to the table in that series and also explore whether the selectors erred in not recalling him as soon as he overcame his injury.
In Vizag, on a surface deteriorating quickly with each ball played, England needed some breathing space while batting and bowling if they were to compete against India after losing the toss on Day 1. The visitors would’ve expected that the nervous debutant will offer them that chance from his end. Jayant, however, showed no nerves at all and turned the tables on the opposition, contributing precious knocks of 35 & 27 to go with his incisive spells of 1/38 & 3/30. It’s not that India wouldn’t have won if not for Jayant, it is that he only helped the team take the game further away from the visitors, close out any possible openings. There were no easy runs on offer when he bowled and no cheap wicket when he batted.
The next Test in Mohali saw England win a crucial toss on a flat wicket and make the easy decision of batting first. With nothing on offer from the track, India needed their bowlers to keep things tight and see whether they can force the batsmen to take undue risks. India had a great first session where they got Cook and Root out, with the latter dismissed by our man, before Bairstow and Buttler led a recovery. England still finished with an underpar score of 283. In that innings, Jayant showed his maturity in that he never went about chasing wickets after the early scalp of Root and stuck to plan A, not shifting away from his role. In reward, besides Root, he also got Bairstow out, ending with figures of 2/49.
When India batted, after a good beginning they stuttered to 156/5 which later became 204/6. That was England’s big chance. If they had wrapped up the tail quickly and got a big lead, who knows how a chase of 350 would’ve gone when the surface was expected to be at its worst for batting? Ashwin and Jadeja then combined and took the game back to the opponent, playing their strokes fluently. They put on 97 runs for the seventh wicket. Yet, when Ashwin got dismissed for 72, the Indian score was only 18 ahead of the visitors. It is then, again, Jayant who closed the door for England as he batted commendably in partnership with Jadeja and struck a vital half-century, his first in Test cricket. Jadeja missed out on his ton, being out for 90, while Jayant was dismissed for 55. But that stand ensured India had a lead of 134, when they could’ve otherwise conceded one of about 70–80 runs. The hosts eventually won by eight wickets, with Jayant adding two more scalps to his kitty in the second half.
It is only at the Wankhede did Jayant struggle to find control. But so did the senior pros Ashwin and Jadeja for a while in that first-innings. The red soil Mumbai tracks used in Test cricket are believed to be a spinner’s delight but they also pose a challenge for you to bring the bowleds and the LBWs in play because of the spongy bounce available. It wasn’t until Ashwin and Jadeja bowled fuller and quicker through the air did they get the wickets for their effort.
England piled on 400 in that first-innings, which required superlative hundreds from Vijay and Virat for India to get close to it. Yet, at 7 down, the hosts found themselves in troubled waters, still trailing by 36 runs when Jayant walked up to the crease. In one of the more remarkable lower-order stands, he added 241 runs with his skipper. Jayant’s hundred was glint with superb strokeplay against both spin and pace and remains the only Test match ton by an Indian №9. It was a marvellous knock that helped India regain ascendency as they went on to clinch victory by an innings and 36 runs. Jayant proved he isn’t fazed by the pressure of the international stage, even in a difficult situation with the opposition on top. Besides the obvious batting ability, it is this great quality of that innings which stood out for me.
The highs of Mumbai soon turned into the lows as Jayant got ruled out of the following Test in Chennai because of a hamstring injury. After spending time away in recovery, he was benched for the standalone Test versus Bangladesh at Hyderabad where India played an extra seamer for the opposition in Bhuvneshwar Kumar. Then came that dreadful Pune Test against Australia. All that could’ve gone wrong did.
On good Indian pitches, the gap between the standard of Indian spinners and overseas spinners who arrive here stands exposed over a Test match or a series. Rank turners like the one in Pune tend to close that gap. It isn’t a comment on Lyon, who is a great spinner, but on Steve O’Keefe, who took 12 wickets in that Test at a cost nearly next to nothing. It was turning square from Day 1 and once Australia got 260 on that track, it was always going to be tough task for India.
Ashwin, Jadeja and Jayant all imparted more spin on the ball and got more turn off the deck than O’Keefe. But you didn’t need to turn the ball on that track, it was the flat ball fired in straight that got you the wickets. O’Keefe bowled it fuller and quicker, catching India’s right-hand batsmen at the crease, who anticipated the left-arm spinner to turn the ball away from them.
Jayant had a horrible Test, going for over 4 an over in either innings, but neither were Ashwin and Jadeja able to live up to the expectations. India managed only 212 runs at the expense of their 20 wickets in that Test, yet the wider consensus was that they shouldn’t overreact to the loss and make changes. But team dropped Jayant and played an extra batter in Karun Nair for the following game in Bangalore. Two Tests later, Kuldeep Yadav made his debut. India won that series. Jayant picked up another injury, this time a rare stress fracture of the finger, which took time diagnosing and rehabilitating, and bowled in a first-class match only a year later. He hasn’t been brought back into the Test set-up since.
If he were to go back in time and change something, Jayant in an interview last year to ESPNcricinfo said he wouldn’t let the track in that Pune Test play into his mind too much. “I didn’t pick up enough wickets, and neither did I create enough pressure from one end,” he said. “I was thinking, ‘Turning wicket hai, turning wicket hai, you should get more wickets’.”
“That was the first time in international cricket I was put under a lot of pressure by not doing well, and I think I just let that get to me. In hindsight, if I could change one thing, it would be to not think about wickets, just think about bowling good balls, creating pressure and a bowling (in) partnership.”
That great interview which I recalled for this piece saw Jayant open up his heart. He also refused to blame the untimely injury for what happened to him.
“I think I had decent opportunities. I played Ranji Trophy, I played a good one, one and a half years in the A team regularly,” he had said. “I have had opportunities after that. I went to England, I played Sri Lanka [both for India A]…”
Three years since his most recent Test outing for India, Jayant has been able to play only a handful of first-class fixtures, because his finger-injury was uncommon and it took a while before he could physically and mentally resume bowling. Struggles after such a lay-off are understandable but didn’t the work done before that in a third-spinner’s role deserve some leniency from the selectors and the management?
Life’s hard being the third spinner. Opportunities to play in the XI are rare and even when you’re there, you don’t get to bowl enough. A spinner as promising as Kuldeep has only featured in six Test matches since his debut in Dharamshala nearly four years back. Kuldeep’s emergence has perhaps played a part in Jayant being overlooked as he, in conventional thinking, brings ‘variety' to the attack. It’s brilliant to have the left-arm wrist-spinner, with whom the possibilities from here are endless. But Kuldeep’s inclusion to the set-up need not to have happened at the expense of Jayant. They could’ve added to its depth together.
And it’s not that Jayant didn’t offer a sense of ‘variety’ to the line-up. In general, Indian spinners when they graduate to the top level take time to start beating batsmen in the air, take the surface out of the equation, something that has plagued many of them in overseas conditions where not much is on offer from the track. Ashwin, for example, has only now started doing so. Unsurprisingly, the premier off-spinner’s record abroad is enjoying an upward curve. Jayant is one of those rare Indian domestic spinner, who showed that quality very early in his Test career. In that England series, yes, there were spells where he got turn off the deck, but in general, Jayant did the Englishmen in the air. That Root dismissal being a prime example of it.
The simplicity of Jayant’s action can lead us to believe he’s not doing ‘enough’ on the ball. But that would be an error. He imparts good spin on the ball, drifts the ball into and across the batsman, using the closer and the wider angles at the crease. Beating the batsman in the air is an habit that Jayant has cultivated playing on those green tops in Lahli for Haryana. Very few Indian spinners in the Ranji Trophy would have their home ground least favourable to them. Jayant is one of them. Those tracks give a misleading picture to his first-class numbers, but they’ve enabled his development differently to others as a spinner. With nothing on offer from the track, you gotta beat ’em in the air. Those pitches in Lahli have also helped Jayant horn his batting technique, his defense, for example, looked tighter than Jadeja’s did at the start of his Test career.
But the fact that he wasn’t recalled immediately after being fit, tells us that the selectors probably felt Jayant didn’t do enough when he was there. The earnest cricketer needs to send a good reminder of what he can offer to the side. And he knows it.
“To make a comeback in the Indian Test team you have to be relentless and keep knocking on the door. I think one good Ranji season will get me back in the reckoning. Everybody has seen what I can do, the pros and cons. I’ve been there. It’s about having that good season, getting into the India A set-up again, starting from scratch. If you do well in Ranji Trophy and then do well in India A, then only you get into the Test team. It’s a very good filter.”
