A few hours ago, Ravindra Jadeja scripted his name in the history books by joining Rahul Dravid in the list of winning the most Man of the Match awards (11) in Tests. Only Sachin Tendulkar has won more prestigious awards than Jaddu in the toughest format. But now, it has come as a massive surprise that the star all-rounder has been left out of India’s ODI squad for the upcoming series against Australia.
BCCI chief selector Ajit Agarkar attended the post-match press conference after India thumped the West Indies in Ahmedabad. The main agenda of the conference was the announcement of India’s ODI squad and also the unveiling of Shubman Gill as the new ODI skipper. While the squad was majorly unsurprising, the biggest talking point was the snub of Ravindra Jadeja.
Why is Ravindra Jadeja dropped from ODIs?
Just like Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli, Jadeja also hung up his boots from the shortest format after winning the T20 World Cup 2024. However, he remained untouched in the other two formats until today. Jadeja, who has played 204 ODIs for India, has been left out in favour of Axar Patel, who is already a major part of the T20I setup.
Upon asking on why Jadeja isn’t part of the team, Agarkar pointed out that the Australian conditions didn’t allow such luxury. He said having two left-arm options wouldn’t have been possible Down under, with only Axar getting the nod. While Jadeja continues to assert his dominance in red-ball cricket, his time might be over in ODIs now, with the next World Cup being in Africa too.
Incidentally, Jadeja has a poor average of 71.2 with the ball in Australia after 27 games. Even with the bat, he hasn’t been able to transpire authority, having scored just 395 runs at a strike rate of below 77 after 24 innings since 2022. Axar, meanwhile, has time and again sneaked in with clutch performances with both bat and ball. He is an ideal batter to have in case of collapse and his spin hitting has improved drastically.
“Right now, we could only take one left-arm spinner for the Australia series. It wasn’t possible to fit in two. Ravindra Jadeja is absolutely in our plans—everyone knows how good he is and what he offers as an all-rounder and a fielder,” Agarkar stated in the press conference.
“But for this short series, we wanted to maintain balance with Washington Sundar and Kuldeep Yadav in the squad.”
India squad for 3-match ODI series vs Australia
Shubman Gill (Captain), Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer (VC), Axar Patel, KL Rahul (WK), Nitish Kumar Reddy, Washington Sundar, Kuldeep Yadav, Harshit Rana, Mohammed Siraj, Arshdeep Singh, Prasidh Krishna, Dhruv Jurel (WK), Yashasvi Jaiswal.
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