All-round Ravindra Jadeja destroys Rajasthan Royals

India international scores unbeaten 36 and takes four wickets. Ahmed Rizvi reports from Dubai.

Ravindra Jadeja scored an unbeaten 36 before running through the Rajasthan Royals batting order with his left-arm spin in Dubai on Wednesday night. Pawan Singh / The National

DUBAI // There was Dwayne Smith and then there were the rest. It seemed he was a batting on a different pitch, free of the gremlins that were haunting the others. Or he probably had lunch at a different restaurant.

The burly Barbadian bludgeoned his way to a 28-ball 50, smashing three massive sixes. None of his other Chennai Super Kings teammates managed even one, and among them was a certain MS Dhoni. For the Rajasthan Royals, Sanju Samson hit two, but not one of their top-order batsmen managed to reach even 25.

On the match scorecard, Smith’s innings stood out like an Everest in a landscape dotted by hills. The closest was Ravindra Jadeja’s sedate, unbeaten 33-ball 36 and the contribution from those two helped CSK post 140 for six and that was seven runs more than what the Rajasthan Royals could eventually get.

Jadeja was a star performer with the ball as well, taking four wickets for 33 as the Royals were bowled out for 133. He dismissed Shane Watson (7) and Samson (16) off consecutive balls in his first over and that broke the back of Rajasthan’s run-chase.

“When I went for batting, I was just talking to myself and telling myself: ‘the wicket is slow, ball is keeping low, don’t look for big shots, just rotate the strike and keep batting till the end’,” Jadeja said after his man-of-the-match performance.

“I was just looking for singles and doubles and told myself to not look for big shots.”

Unfortunately none of the Rajasthan batsmen tried to do that. Too many of them perished attempting big shots, or perhaps trying to ape the likes of Smith or Glenn Maxwell.

“We are not trying to bat like anyone else,” said Watson, the Rajasthan captain who skied Jadeja to long-off after having dispatched his previous delivery into the stands.

“We are just trying to do the best job we can, at the right time. Unfortunately, some of the decisions that we made at times with the bat just weren’t the right ones at that time.

“That’s something we will certainly learn from. We will not make the same mistakes again. Part of what we do at Rajasthan Royals is try not to make the same mistakes again.

“I know everyone’s hurting about the way we batted, the way we executed with the bat, because we know if we were able to get just one partnership, at any stage, whether it was any time with our batters, we would have been home quiet easily.

“So, as I said, it’s a big learning curve for us. There’s certainly a few very obvious things we can do better next time to be able to make sure when we set the game up like that, we finish it off.”

The highest partnership for Rajasthan was the 28-run association for the ninth wicket between Rajat Bhatia and Dhawal Kulkarni, who was incidentally their top-scorer, returning unbeaten on 28 after coming in at No 10.

In the end, the match seemed a bit like A Tale of Two Cities – one where Smith batted with absolute abandon and the other where the rest toiled for their runs. The West Indian batted as he usually does: without a care, spreading the field and then spread-eagling it with sheer power.

When Chennai lost their fifth wicket in the 12th over, they had 74 runs on the board and 50 of them came from Smith. His contribution was invaluable, and Watson was disappointed he could not do the same for his team.

“The batting performance is just extremely disappointing and I’ll certainly take a huge amount of the blame for that performance,” he said. “For me, the most experienced player and as the leader as well, it’s certainly not good enough.”

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