All laugh for 'Sir' Ravindra Jadeja

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Google 'Sir' and the first result that pops up in the dropdown autosuggest is 'Sir Ravindra Jadeja', ahead of Sir Alex Ferguson and Sir Isaac Newton!

In the last one year, the Saurashtra all-rounder has transformed into a social media sensation, thanks to the 'Sir Jadeja' jokes on Twitter and Facebook.

His latest spat with Suresh Raina on Friday night during the one-dayer against the West Indies is only going to add fuel to the online fire for the wrong reasons. But his digital reputation has been built by his cricketing skills.

Before 2012, Jadeja was seen as a player who had not delivered on his initial promise. Shane Warne had dubbed him cricket's rock star after the first IPL, but his performances in later years had been patchy.

The upswing started in 2011 with a triple century against Odisha in the Ranji Trophy and a couple of triple centuries in 2012 against Gujarat and Railways.

He followed this up with match-winning performances in Tests and one-dayers against England and Australia (dismissed Michael Clarke five out of six times).

"Because Sir Donald Bradman has the same number of triple centuries in his career, people started prefixing 'sir' to Jadeja's name," says Karthik Laxman, a businessman who was among the pioneers of Sir Jadeja jokes.

"The jokes had a sarcastic undercurrent initially, given that Jadeja wasn't quite the finished product then and had let the team down on a few occasions."

The seeds of knighthood were sown in the 2009 T20 World Cup when he played a Test-like innings, scoring 29 runs off 35 balls against England, resulting in India's loss.

But the Sir Jadeja jokes took a legendary leap when Team India captain MS Dhoni tweeted his first joke on April 9. "When sir jadeja drives his jeep, his jeep remains still and road moves and when he goes in to bat the pavillion moves to the wkt," he tweeted.

Suddenly everybody had a Sir Jadeja joke, whether it was ordinary citizens or Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah or prominent Odisha politician Baijayant Jay Panda. The Golden Ball winner was the most mentioned cricketer on Twitter when India won the Champions Trophy last month.

Jadeja has taken the jokes in true sportsman spirit resulting in respect for the rising star's capacity to laugh at himself. Already, there are more than 50,000 followers on the parody account @SirRavindraJadeja on twitter, almost 30,000 likes on the Facebook page 'Sir Ravindra Jadeja' and even couple of websites dedicated to 'Sir'.


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Keywords:Google,Sir Ravindra Jadeja, Sir Alex Ferguson, Sir Isaac Newton, Twitter ,Facebook, Suresh Raina,Shane Warne ,Ranji Trophy , T20 World Cup ,Sir Jadeja joke,cricket news,sports news