How Ravindra Jadeja took on fans’ challenges head on
A lot of expectations are attached to the people who are the best at what they do. Being the number one bowler in Tests, it is only natural for the fans to expect Ravindra Jadeja to dismantle batting line-ups in Test matches. However, Jadeja, who also happens to be the best fielder in the Indian cricket team, has an added burden of expectations entrusted upon his shoulders.
Being an immaculate fielder, the fans have been spoilt by Jadeja's habitual brilliance whenever the ball comes close to him on the field. And it is for these fans that the #ClingOn Jadeja challenge was created by Castrol Activ.
Countless fans sent in their tweets with fielding challenges for Ravindra Jadeja – and he bossed each and every one of them.
The first hurdle saw a kid challenge Jadeja. Here, the left-armer had to #ClingOn to a barrage of balls being fed to him from six simultaneous bowling machines in a random sequence controlled by the kid. In a challenge that lasted for 30 seconds, Jadeja caught all the 22 balls that were fired at him.
The second challenge was actually an amalgamation of multiple obstacles that were posted by the fans on Twitter. The Gujarat Lions all-rounder had to overcome a set of mini hurdles – he had to stop a ball from crossing the boundary and execute a direct hit in the shortest possible time. And he did it all perfectly.
The subsequent challenge was to play tennis against a professional player, but not in the conventional way. While the tennis player was using a tennis racquet, Jadeja had to use his bare hands to counter the serve.
Jadeja fell to 15-40 after the opponent’s first four serves. For the uninitiated, that basically meant that the next point the opponent got would have resulted in Jaddu losing the challenge.
However, as Jaddu has shown before, he did not give up! He went on to stage an emphatic comeback to win the challenge, beating the tennis pro at his own game.
The final contest was Jadeja v/s Bulbs, where the former Chennai Super Kings all-rounder had to shoot down five bulbs in 10 attempts. In his first five shots, Jadeja failed to score a single hit, but he went on to do the seemingly impossible by shooting down five bulbs in a row to win the challenge.
When asked about how he developed such skills, the Castrol Activ ambassador put it all down to practice and hard work. He said, “It is all about practice. When someone focuses on an individual thing, that person gets better at it.”
The purpose of this challenge was to put Ravindra Jadeja in an uncomfortable situation and see how he reacted to it. Needless to say, the 28-year-old did not get fazed by any of it and finished all the challenges with aplomb.