Jadeja forged a 30-run partnership with Virat Kohli at the other end. He withstood the pressure towards the end of the first session in the process. He was dismissed for 10 after facing 34 deliveries. He was caught in the slips by Joe Root off the bowling of Chris Woakes, who proceeded to take two more wickets to finish as the pick of the bowlers.
Numerous possibilities were outlined regarding Jadeja’s surprise appearance at No.5 ahead of specialist batsmen. Virender Sehwag primarily believed the change was executed to introduce a right-hand and left-hand combination to throw the England bowlers off their rhythm. As per the Hindustan Times, Sehwag said:
However, Sehwag feels that this would not be a regular occurrence and is just a one-time affair. Sehwag added:
Even when I wasn’t scoring as an opener, I was sent to bat in the middle order: Virender Sehwag
The explosive opening batsman noted that even his batting position was altered when he was not amongst the runs. He also cited an example from the 2004 Tour of Australia where captain Sourav Ganguly shuffled batting positions with the under-fire Sachin Tendulkar.
The Little Masters endured a rough tour after a poor string of outings in Brisbane and Adelaide. Following another failure in the first innings of the Boxing Day Test, he was demoted to No.5 with Sourav Ganguly coming in at the No.4 position. The move arguably paid dividends as Tendulkar went on to score an iconic innings of 241 in his very next innings. Sehwag added:
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