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Everyone else from that 2015 dressing room has moved on. Ravindra Jadeja simply refused to. (BCCI Photo)Jadeja, somehow, is still standing. “The most important thing is that he’s a multidimensional player. He’ll get you wickets, he’ll bat wherever you send him, No. 4, No. 6, No. 7 or No. 8, and he’ll still score runs. Then, in the field, he’ll produce a run-out or a catch that very few others can. He’s a complete all-rounder. That’s what makes him different from any other cricketer,” Saurashtra head coach Niraj Odedra told The Indian Express. When he returned to the Test side in late 2015, he was viewed largely as India’s premier left-arm spinner. On the raging turner in Mohali against South Africa, or the unresponsive Chennai surface against England in 2016, Jadeja was a relentless wicket-taker who squeezed batsmen with unwavering accuracy. Somewhere along the way, another dimension began to show. His technique tightened, his shot selection improved, his temperament settled into the longer format.Story continues below this ad A maiden Test century against West Indies in Rajkot in 2018 announced the change. A career-best 175 not out against Sri Lanka in Mohali confirmed it. Then a hundred at Edgbaston in 2022, after India had slumped to 98 for 5. Three years later, 516 runs across a five-Test series in England left little doubt his batting belonged at the highest level. Even now, that trust remains. With Shubman Gill unable to bat in the first innings of India’s warm-up against a Sri Lanka Cricket XI this month, Jadeja was pushed up to No. 4, a spot he wasn’t first choice for. He made 63 off 117 balls. Mindset change Odedra puts the biggest change down to something other than technique. “Himself. Nobody else. The biggest change was his mindset. He had to believe that he wasn’t just somebody who could bowl, but a player who could bat as well. He backed himself to such an extent that that’s what made him a better batsman,” he said. “People have this perception that he’s a bowler who can only bowl. But from a very young age, Under-16, Under-19, he always was a very good batsman. When he started playing for the Indian team, he realised that if he didn’t score runs, if he didn’t become a multidimensional player, then he wouldn’t last long like others.” The earliest test came before any of that. In 2005, when Jadeja was sixteen, his mother died of burns from a kitchen fire. He was not at home when it happened. He wanted to give up the game afterwards. What kept him in it was the thought that she hadn’t raised a cricketer for him to walk away from it.Story continues below this ad His father had told him something, years before any of this, back when Jadeja didn’t yet know cricket would become his living. “When I started playing cricket, my father gave me very important advice. At that point, I didn’t even know that I will be playing cricket seriously, forget playing for the country. He told me it’s your performance on the ground that matters,” Jadeja said in a separate interview to this newspaper in 2023. Ground mein perform karo, bus baat khatam, his father had put it. Perform on the field, and the chatter ends there. Recovering from setbacks The setbacks kept coming in different forms. In 201