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Cricket Players'He's taken off to a different planet altogether': Karthik reserves special praise for 'most improved' India star
India on Sunday recorded their 12th consecutive win in T20 cricket, equaling Afghanistan’s record winning streak in the shortest format.
He always had the ability to bat but Ravindra Jadeja's skills with the willow seem to have sky-rocketed since his return to the mix. A long injury lay-off kept Jadeja out of the national set-up for almost two months but the Saurashtra all-rounder made a stunning comeback against Sri Lanka to hit unbeaten 45 and 22 in the second and third T20I respectively.
The 33-year-old Jadeja blasted 45 off just 18 deliveries on Saturday and helped India gain an unassailable 2-0 lead in the three-match T20I series. He then scored 22 not out off 15 deliveries and added 45 runs for the fifth wicket with Shreyas Iyer to steer India to another comfortable series win.
Jadeja's batting show earned praise from skipper Rohit Sharma, who hinted towards the all-rounder's promotion up the order moving forward. With his wide-ranging abilities, Jadeja is arguably the ideal player that any team would want to have in its combination. He is an essential part of the Indian team's core for this year's T20 World Cup and veteran wicketkeeper-batter Dinesh Karthik has labelled Jadeja as the "most improved player" since the 2019 World Cup.
"For me, Jadeja's been the most improved cricketer in the world since the 2019 World Cup. He's gone a notch above... I think he was a bit hurt at the start when he didn't play but his career has completely taken a different tangent. It's like rocket fuel has been added on to him. He's taken off to a different planet altogether, not only in white-ball formats but also in Test cricket," Karthik told Cricbuzz.
Karthik also heaped praise on Jadeja's recent batting display against Sri Lanka and predicted he will play a big role for Chennai Super Kings (CSK) in the upcoming IPL season. Jadeja last year had hammered 37 runs off Harshal Patel in the record-equalling final-over carnage. Karthik also bracketed Jadeja among the automatic picks for this year's T20 World Cup.
"You can see responsibilities being given to him. I do feel that he will bat much higher for CSK this season because he's showing the potential of being a pure batter. We can see how he batted against Sri Lanka... proper cricketing shots and no slogging. He was playing on merit and not over-hitting the ball. I thoroughly enjoyed the knock."
"His bowling has been steady throughout the career but it's his batting that has picked up to another level. He has the capability to come on and take down an attack at any point in time. He won a few games single-handedly for CSK last year with the bat and we are going to see more of that. He's one of the all-rounders India cannot do without him when they board the flight to Australia," he further added.
