Kolkata: Allround immortality is the most intimidating pursuit in Test cricket. Garry Sobers was an outlier in achieving that with aplomb when cricket wasn’t so exhausting. Later, Ian Botham, Kapil Dev, Imran Khan were picked primarily for their bowling, as is Ravichandran Ashwin now.

But Ravindra Jadeja? Three consecutive Ranji Trophy hundreds in 2012 were primarily why he was flown from Rajkot to Nagpur for his debut against England. Here we are now, celebrating his unique double of 300 Test wickets and 3000 runs.

Unique because no other Indian left-arm spinner has come this far. When the great Bishan Singh Bedi called time on his career in 1979, he had 266 wickets at a phenomenal average of 28.71. Jadeja’s average is 24.

In the history of the game, Daniel Vettori and Rangana Herath were the first left-arm spinners to breach the 300-wicket mark. But they were also strike bowlers for their respective teams, which meant they were used to getting wider berths. Jadeja, however, often had to operate within the confines of selection-related riders, most notably as sole spin option on overseas pitches that had barely had anything in it for spinners.

Which often meant wheeling away over after over from one end so that fast bowlers could be given a break, or when the overs’ rate needed a day-end bump. If a rough was created, trust Jadeja to bring it into play against right-handers. If not, still trust him to at least keep the runs under a leash.

Typical of true allrounders though, Jadeja still found ways to make a lasting impact. Like in Birmingham two years back, where India went from 98/5 to 416 only because Jadeja had decided to hold one end while Rishabh Pant went berserk at the other. Both scored hundreds in an innings where the next best score was 31, from Jasprit Bumrah.

It’s something, as Ravichandran Ashwin said in Chennai last week, after they had put on 199 in a game-changing partnership, India have come to expect of Jadeja very organically.

“I saw how he used to bat. Then I was batting ahead of him at one stage. And he has actually walked in at No 5 for us several times. Many of these occasions over the last 3 or 4 years, when he has walked in to bat, I felt so good in the dressing room. You feel so calm and composed when he is batting. He has brought that kind of assurance.”

That’s not alone what makes Jadeja so special. To find his way back at a time wrist spin had caught the fancy of the nation, that too without a five-wicket haul in 22 Tests from 2018 to 2021, hinging solely on his sheer control and a stifling economy (never went above 2.83 in those four years) is a more indicative measure of Jadeja’s mental strength.

Batting helped Jadeja stay afloat, and probably taken for granted was his sensational fielding. And to his credit, Jadeja never allowed himself to be typecast despite early white-ball success.

“As a youngster I started with white-ball cricket and everyone used to tell me I was a white-ball cricketer,” Jadeja told the broadcasters after Day 4 of the second Test against Bangladesh at Kanpur on Monday. “But I worked hard with the red ball and finally all the hardwork has paid off. It’s special when you achieve something for India. I’ve been playing Tests for 10 years now and finally I’ve reached this milestone. It’s special and will forever remain with me.”

At the heart of this record is a decade-long home supremacy that has come to be associated whenever Jadeja and Ashwin are in the playing eleven.

“These are guys that don’t give you any bad balls,” said Morne Morkel, India’s bowling coach, at the press conference on Monday. “You always (have to) find ways to score. If you face that from both ends, you’re going to work hard for your run. And that’s why, as a partnership, they’ve been so successful.”

Ashwin has been indomitable at home but Jadeja’s numbers are equally staggering. A third-best bowling average (20.77) at home Tests after Muttiah Muralitharan (19.56) and Fred Trueman (20.04) among all bowlers with at least 200 wickets alerts the world to his relentless control.

Exhilarating is that 76% win percentage whenever Jadeja has featured in a home Test, working out to just three defeats in 45 Tests.

But nothing highlights Jadeja’s consistency better than the pace with which he achieved this feat of 3000 runs and 300 wickets when Khaled Ahmed offered him a return catch. In his 74th Test, behind only Ian Botham’s record of 72, Jadeja has gone where very few have.

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