I am passing a javascript variable containing a string to the server via jquery.ajax. Although the \"success\" condition is called, the server-side WebMethod is never calle
Try following fixes for your Ajax request:
$.ajax({
type: "post",
url: "Playground.aspx/childBind",
data: "{sendData: '" + ID + "'}",
contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8",
dataType: "json",
success: function (result) { alert("successful!" + result.d); }
})
Notice changed dataType and data value as a string.