Ravindra Jadeja added his name to the history of cricket by giving the best performance of his whole career with an unbeaten score of 175 on Day 2 of the first Test against Sri Lanka in Mohali. On Saturday, Jadeja broke Kapil Dev’s record for the highest score by an Indian coming to bat at No.7 or below in Test cricket. Jadeja added his name to the history 35 years after Kapil Dev. Kapil Dev had scored 163 against Sri Lanka in Kanpur in the December of 1986 while batting at No.7. Jadeja went way past that score on Saturday in an innings that was stamped with class and authority.
He also became one of the three Indians to register a score of more than 150 while batting at No.7 or below in Test cricket. Apart from Jadeja and Kapil, Rishabh Pant is the one playing at the 150-plus score, batting at that number. The India wicketkeeper-batter had scored a score of 159 against Australia in Sydney in the year 2019. MS Dhoni’s highest score in test matches batting at No.7 is 144, he achieved that against South Africa in the year 2011.
Jadeja marked three-century stands with Pant, Ashwin, and Mohammed Shami and brought home a score total of 574 for 8.
Jadeja was unbeaten on 175 and Shami was batting on 20 when Rohit Sharma declared the Indian innings. Jadeja hit three sixes and 17 fours of his unbeaten innings in which he scored a strike rate of 76.75. He was happy to play second fiddle on Day 1 when Pant at the other end was going ballistic. On Day 2, he resumed at 45 and scored hot with Ashwin (61). But once he reached three figures, there was no stopping Jadeja. He ended up scoring more than 80% of the runs in the 103-run partnership between him and Shami.
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