The first thing one notices when they type Sheldon Jackson on google is the question “Is Sheldon Jackson an Indian?”. The 35 year old from Saurashtra is one of the unluckiest players not to have given a call up to the Indian side, despite having some stellar performances over the years. Jackson will be seen playing for KKR this year and with age and time running out he will want to make the best use of this chance before he hangs up his boots in the years to come.
The story as it happened –
A twitter user who goes by the name @dr_raghib took to the social media microblogging site and wrote “this is the height of comedy! The so called cricket experts on #Sports Tak are continuously calling Sheldon Jackson a foreign player. Shame! “ . this caused an uproar on social media till the journalist/ cricket expert in question Rahul Rawat had to come out and refute the claims. Rawat while replying to the twitter user’s video replied “Nowhere during this clip or during the entire show did I ever mention #sheldonjackson as a foreign player. My bad I didn’t realize when he got called an overseas entrant. Pls go through the entire show because I am very well aware of Sheldon’s achievements for Indian cricket”
Nowhere during this clip or during the entire show did I ever mention #SheldonJackson as a foreign player. My bad I didn’t realise when he got called an overseas entrant. Pls go through the entire show because I am very well aware of Sheldon’s achievements for Indian cricket. 🙏 https://t.co/W1M5WcUfLz
— Rahul Rawat (@rawatrahul9) March 23, 2022
đź’Ąđź’Ą https://t.co/2x7VqqrfEC
— Sheldon Jackson (@ShelJackson27) March 23, 2022
Sheldon Jackson posts an hilarious reply to this whole confusion –
Once the matter came to light, the 35 year old wicket keeper batter from Saurashtra took to twitter to highlight a stat provided a fan on the microblogging site. The fan had put a map of the state of Saurashtra and listed the achievements of Jackson being 2nd in the list of highest century makers for Saurashtra. The user had written “Most Ranji Trophy 100’s by Saurashtra born players (Ranjitsinhji’s birth place) 21: Cheteshwar Pujara. 17: Sheldon Jackson. Only Pujara has scored more centuries than Sheldon #cricket. The stat in question is wrong as Jackson has scored 19 centuries
Sheldon Jackson’s career by numbers –
Sheldon Jackson made his Ranji debut aged 25 against Railways in 2011. Opening the innings, Jackson scored 39 and 13 while also pouching 2 catches and a stumping. Saurashtra won the game by 97 runs with Jadeja picking 10 for 65 in the game and scoring 73 runs. Pujara was also part of the team as he scored 33 runs in total during the game. Jackson so far has played 79 games in Ranji trophy scoring 5947 runs with 19 hundreds and 31 fifties with an average of 50. He has also played 67 List A games scoring 2346 runs with a best of 150 not out along with 8 centuries and 12 fifties at an average of 37. In the T20 format he has played a total of 65 games with 1511 runs with the help of 1 century and 10 fifties and a strike rate of 121.
Sheldon Jackson has been part of RCB and KKR outfits. He made his IPL debut for KKR against Delhi scoring 12 on debut in 2017. His last game was against RCB during the same IPL 2017 season where did not get to bat. In total, Jackson has played 4 games scoring 38 runs with a strike rate of 122 and a best of 16 against SRH. Jackson would hope he gets a chance to finally show his worth and may be grab the eyes of the selectors to give him that elusive Indian cap before he calls it quits.