Jadeja Puts New Zealand in The Spot.

"I don't know if he knows which way it is going," laughed BJ Watling at the post-match press conference when asked about Ravindra Jadeja. This was an answer to a specific query on whether the New Zealand batsmen try to pick the ball off the hand.

The tried and tested method of handling spinners is to try and pick the ball off the hand. That itself is easier said than done, to gauge how the spinner is holding the ball, to see the direction in which the seam is being held and for other noticeable variations such as the doosra, googly or the carrom ball, to watch the wrists closely. Now this isn't an easy task. But you expect Test batsmen to do it day in and day out. Over a period of time until it becomes routine.

It can be likened to something as banal as brushing your teeth.

Batsmen often keep talking to themselves about watching the ball closely. There are distractions aplenty. For the very best, it comes as second-nature after years of thrusting it into the subconscious. To the ones out-of-form, it is mostly because they've forgotten how to hold the brush because of a variety of reasons.

The bowler is always thinking about a ploy to throw the batsmen off from watching the ball. Some do it by hiding the ball, or even coming in from behind the umpire. If you watch Jadeja, you will notice that he does none of this. His best ally apart from the unerring accuracy is that, on a wearing pitch, the ball tends to deviate in an unpredictable manner. Many a time you would see in close-ups that Jadeja does nothing more than impart revs in one direction, but the ball going the other way after pitching.

While his partner, Ashwin tries to do it in different manners, such as the arm-ball or the carrom ball, Jadeja is not reliant on any such thing himself. Instead he focuses on the best spot from where the pitch will do the job for him. Those are the rough patches and the foot-marks created by the bowlers. It is from here that the ball goes in an unpredictable manner. There might sometimes be lesser revs so that the ball doesn't do too much off the pitch but nothing more than that.

That there is none like him to do it over and over is an unappreciated fact. For Jadeja, as he admitted, this came from bowling on such pitches from an early age. "There is no mystery," he said in the press conference when asked about his bowling. "We didn't have very well-prepared grounds and pitches and those are the kinds I've been brought up on, the kinds where there were no groundsmen and we were just practising. The facilities we had were of that kind, so having played on such pitches, I've got an idea of how to bowl, which areas to bowl on, what speed to bowl at. From my childhood to under-17, under-19 till now, I've played on turners or unprepared pitches."

That says much about how he does what he does but still does not answer the what.

Over the course of the day, it was spotted that Anil Kumble had a chat with Jadeja just before the start of play and later Jadeja himself checking with the umpire if he was cutting the return crease at some point. For the second instance, it was evident that he was concerned about not being no-balled while trying to create angles. He does try bowling wide of the crease and sometimes closer. Whether he switches angles after looking at the batsmen play is unanswered but he understands the need to do so and in effect what it does to the batsmen.

"Ab turning track pe, jaisa ki maine kaha ki ek partnership hoti hai. Uske baad naya batsman koi bhi jayega, uske liya itna footmarks dekh ke udhar unki, matlab... Udhar hi wo thoda ghabra jayenge ki itne footmarks saamne hain to ekdum hi confidently defend nahin kar payenge." What he says here is that he knows that new batsmen coming in are a little tense looking at the numerous footmarks on the pitch and so can't defend confidently. He's played a part in creating that doubt because they also know that he is one bowler, consistently capable of hitting those marks.

In fact a summation of the above was his discussion with Kumble as well.

"There was some rough outside the left-handers' offstump, on the sixth stump, so he (Kumble) was telling me to bowl from an angle and from a bit wide of the crease. He told me to target putting as many balls as possible in that rough because from there, some balls were turning and some were going straight. That would have created doubts in the batsmen's minds."

He understands the doubts that are there in the batsmen's mind clearly, more so that of the overseas batsmen such as New Zealand. "On a spinning wicket (they didn't know) which balls to defend, which to stop, which to hit. I think by the time they understood that, they had already lost six or seven wickets. That was an advantage," he said.

The plan was a straightforward one but as always, it is in the execution of it that Jadeja excelled. It is no surprise then that he got the LBWs to go in his favour. The record for most LBWs in an innings is seven and India almost got there with six.

"It's good bowling. Sometimes the ball spins here, and sometimes it doesn't. It's about the lines we play and we're working on that every day, trying to figure it out. They are two quality spinners that know how to bowl spin in their conditions.

"As you'd expect with a day three wicket there is a lot more rough, a lot more footmarks out there and it's getting a bit slower in the middle of the track. But that is what you expect when you start the game. We know it is going to get tougher and tougher into day four and day five. No surprises there," said Watling.

He's right about that. With Jadeja, there aren't too many surprises. What you see is what you get but what he brings in (particularly in sub-continent conditions) is something invaluable. And add his lower order batting contributions to the mix, you can see why Jadeja has fast become an integral part of this successful Indian Test team.