Chennai Super Kings (CSK) captain Ravindra Jadeja is regarded as one of the safest fielders in the world as his reputation has grown thanks to highlight-reel worthy catches and run-outs over the years.
However, Thursday, April 21, 2022, was one of those rare days when he had a difficult outing in the field as he missed two straightforward catches in the 'El Clasico' IPL 2022 encounter against Mumbai Indians (MI) at DY Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai.
Jadeja won the toss and elected to bowl first as has been the trend in the season thus far, and his young seam bowler Mukesh Choudhary delivered a perfect start as he picked the first three wickets cheaply including those of MI captain Rohit Sharma and Ishan Kishan for ducks in the first over itself.
Mitchell Santner also bowled a fine spell from the other end but without much luck as Jadeja first dropped Dewald Brevis and then debutant Hrithik Shokeen off his bowling. Both catches were quite straightforward and left the commentators as well as viewers in shock when Jadeja spilled them.
Eventually, MI recovered from their top-order collapse to finish their innings at 155/7, with Tilak Varma scoring an unbeaten 51.
The CSK fielding performance kept getting worse as the innings progressed as they missed almost half a dozen opportunities including MS Dhoni missed a stumping, a sight just as rare as Jadeja's.
Veteran spinner Amit Mishra led a meme fest on Twitter as he took a dig at former Pakistan captain Shahid Afridi while reacting to Jadeja's drop and MS Dhoni's missed stumping.
He wrote, “Jadeja dropping a catch and MSD missing a stumping is like Shahid Afridi batting sensibly with eyes open. No one can believe it happened.”
Here are few more tweets:
