The art of Jadeja: subtle genius hiding in plain sight

Sometimes, great bowlers bowl balls of high quality at such frequency that the viewer doesn't quite realise how good they are. Take the ball Ravindra Jadeja bowled to dismiss Brandon King on day three of the Ahmedabad Test between India and West Indies. The trajectory drew the batter forward, and the length didn't let him get near the pitch of the ball.

Having put King in that position, the ball could have had him in trouble no matter what it did next. On this occasion, it turned sharply to find the outside edge of the sticker on King's hesitantly prodding SS bat.

It may have looked, to the viewer, like this ball hung momentarily above King's eyeline - and it did - but it still left Jadeja's hand at 91kph. Generations of visiting left-arm orthodox spinners have watched Jadeja bowl ball after ball on Indian pitches with this combination of pace, trajectory and fizzing revolutions, and watched him do this with a run-up and delivery style that looks utterly natural, and utterly effortless. They've all tried to match him, and most have only discovered how difficult it is to do what he does.

Ask Jomel Warrican. He has a terrific record in every other Asian country. In nine Test matches in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, he has 52 wickets at an average of 19.92, with two five-wicket hauls. West Indies have won three of those nine Tests.

In India, however, Warrican has taken four wickets in three Tests - including one against Afghanistan - at 67.25. While those numbers might have looked better had he had the chance of bowling on the dustbowls India have prepared in many of their series in recent years, all his Tests against India in India have come on true, traditional Indian pitches.

On pitches like that, you need Jadeja's combination of pace, revolutions, trajectory and accuracy to make an impact on batters.

Throughout India's innings in Ahmedabad, Warrican struggled to achieve the full combination. He naturally bowls at a slower pace than Jadeja, typically in the 77-81kph range, and like so many visiting spinners before him, he tried to bowl quicker: this was how he began his first spell. But his lengths suffered, and his fields, even at the start of his spell, suggested he was aware this might happen, with deep point back on the boundary for damage control on the occasions when he dropped short.

When he came back for his later spells, Warrican mostly bowled at his natural pace, and his lengths immediately improved. But the slower pace gave India's batters time either to go deep in their crease or step out to get to the pitch of the ball, so the better lengths did not trouble them unduly.

And to one of India's batters, the lengths simply didn't seem to matter. That batter, of course, was Jadeja, who stepped out gleefully to Warrican and launched him for five big sixes, hitting cleanly and with the turn, on his way to a breezy, unbeaten 104.

Given how dominant India were, Warrican didn't do all that badly: 29 overs at an economy rate of 3.51, and the wicket of KL Rahul achieved via a clever change of pace and line. India's other batters scored 55 off 105 balls off Warrican. Jadeja knocked him around for 47 off 69.

Put yourself in Warrican's shoes. You're a left-arm spinner who's trying extremely hard to do what Jadeja does with the ball. You do an honest job, within your limitations. Then Jadeja himself comes along, bat in hand, and makes you look utterly ineffectual.

Quite naturally, Jadeja ended the Ahmedabad Test with the Player-of-the-Match award. It was his 11th in Test cricket; since his debut, only Joe Root, Steven Smith (both 13) and Ben Stokes (12) have won more. If that's elite company, how about this three-man club he's 10 runs away from joining? Or this one-man club that's also, quite possibly, within his reach? Jadeja and Kapil Dev. We are going to hear a lot of conversations involving both those names.

That's the level of cricketer Jadeja is, while being a batter and bowler of deceptively simple processes that are all about repeatability and percentages. The high level at which he executes these processes, ball after ball, isn't immediately apparent to the viewer, and the subtleties of his craft, such as his clever use of the bowling crease to vary his angles, only really come alive from watching him over long periods. He doesn't make any special effort to illuminate his methods to his fans, and he routinely tells mediapersons at press conferences - often framing this in humour - that he doesn't want to give away his secrets.

All this has turned him into a globally respected cricketer whose game remains somewhat under-analysed, and whose nuts and bolts remain somewhat underappreciated. So go watch that ball to King again, and give it the reverence it deserves. Go back and watch all those other seemingly routine dismissals of all those batters from all those teams over all those years, and marvel. You'll miss the inevitability of Jadeja's excellence when it's no longer running live on your screen.