A barometer of how Chennai Super Kings (CSK) are doing in IPL 2024 is Ravindra Jadeja's performance. More specifically, his bowling. Even more specifically, if he has bowled four overs. Or, rather, if the conditions are suited enough for him to bowl four overs. Jadeja has bowled his allotment seven times out of 12 this IPL. CSK have won five of those matches.
With the depth in their squad and with the Impact Player rules, CSK have the luxury of not bowling Jadeja out should the pitch be not helpful or should there be too much dew. Or if there are two left-hand batters around or if he is being attacked. There are always options for such times, but this is also true: CSK have won only one match out of five in which Jadeja hasn't been able to bowl his four overs.
Jadeja is a critical player in this CSK squad. He is not the perfect T20 player, but he does more than enough things right to warrant some protection. CSK don't bowl him in the powerplay, for example. Then he almost always gets done before the death overs. Similarly, with the bat, if you protect him from spin, he can be brutal against pace at the death. That is a lesson CSK have hopefully learnt after the brief experiment with sending him up at No. 4.
It is with the ball, though, that Jadeja indicates CSK's health the best, especially from the time the Impact Player came in and bowling Jadeja out stopped being mandatory. ESPNcricinfo's Shiva Jayaraman has worked out the link between Jadeja's bowling and CSK's fortunes even better: since the start of IPL 2023, CSK have won 68.42% of full 20-over matches in which Jadeja has at least started his fourth over; no other bowler bowling out has coincided with such a high percentage of wins.
And it is not like Jadeja is called upon to bowl only on turners. He has bowled out in 70.37% of the matches, which is a decent ratio. It is not quite Rashid Khan-R Ashwin territory - they bowl out in 90% of their teams' matches - but Jadeja still does so more often than Ravi Bishnoi, Piyush Chawla and Mohit Sharma, to name a few frontline bowlers.
Take one look at Jadeja's figures, and you will know why he is so central to CSK's plans. It is not in taking wickets that Jadeja's importance lies - he has taken only eight of them this year, but has gone at just 7.26 an over. On four separate occasions this IPL, he has bowled his four overs for less than a run a ball. You can adjust that economy rate for the absence of powerplay and death overs, but at a time when even the middle overs are being targeted, a banker of a bowler in seven out of ten matches is a luxury.
Pb batting
To not let Jadeja bowl is precisely why Prabhsimran Singh and Shashank Singh took risks against him early on. They had staged a comeback from the two early wickets, were going at a decent rate, were not chasing a huge total; they could have taken a moment once the field spread, but they knew the pitfalls of letting Jadeja settle. Shashank took a massive swipe at the first ball Jadeja bowled, and was lucky to survive. At the end of the over, Prabhsimran gave away his stumps and took a risk to score a boundary.
Jadeja, though, kept plugging away: turn the ball hard, attack the stumps, don't bowl half-volleys or long hops. When Prabhsimran tried the inside-out drive the second time, he ended up hitting Jadeja straight to long-on. By now, Jadeja was hurrying the batters and the asking rate was jumping big time with every dot and single. Wickets are incidental in this format, but they came today, to go with his runs and earning him the Player-of-the-Match award.
With the bat, Jadeja is back in the lower-middle order, which is more suited to him. He had to come in early thanks to a Rahul Chahar double-strike, but Punjab Kings (PBKS) perhaps missed a trick there by not bowling an extra over of spin at Jadeja. They were perhaps looking to save Chahar for later when MS Dhoni would be batting, but as a result, Jadeja faced only three balls of spin early on in his innings. By the time Chahar came back, Jadeja was set.
If you are a CSK opponent and there is no dew, try to keep a left-hand batter in the middle overs if you can. Try to take Jadeja down early but it might not always come off. But do just try to push CSK to try other bowlers in the middle overs because if you let Jadeja run through the middle overs, he ends up creating enough impact to help CSK win.