When Axar Patel got the ball in the fourth over of England’s chase of 172, he had already been told by his captain Rohit Sharma, India’s top scorer, that the pitch was keeping low and skidding, and hitting the big shots wasn’t easy. India were already feeling confident after posting a total that had “10-15 extra” runs on a pitch difficult for batting, and Axar thought since the batters were going to attack him early on, it was best to not do anything “extraordinary” and force the batters to try and do different things, which could work in his favour.
Axar Patel was named the Player of the Match for his three early wickets•ICC/Getty Images
When Axar batted at No. 8 for six balls from Chris Jordan and Jofra Archer in the death overs, he saw that they were taking the pace off, and putting the balls away wasn’t easy at all, though he struck a six off one of Jordan’s slower ones.
“Obviously, I got a clue from that as to what to do and what not to,” Axar said of the mental notes he made while batting. “Giving pace would have made it easy for them. It was ideal to bowl at good areas. No one has hit me when I’ve pitched the ball at a good length. It was important to pitch the ball on a good length and line and that’s what I tried to do in the powerplay.”
His first delivery, to Buttler, wasn’t particularly quick at 91.5kmh. When he bowled one slightly quicker to Bairstow at 94.5kmh, he still stuck to his accuracy by pitching it around off stump, and the ball skidded on with low bounce to knock over the off stump. His third wicket was a reward, along with some luck, after he had conceded just 11 runs in his first two overs. England were 46 for 3 after seven overs and Moeen on 8 off nine balls when he tried to clip a delivery from Axar off his pads and took off for what he thought was a single. But the ball had only deflected off his pad towards Pant, who whipped the bails off when Moeen ventured out of the crease.
“It’s also about pressure,” Axar said when he was asked if the England batters got more worried facing spinners compared to other teams, “when you are chasing, and you know that the wicket is helping the bowlers in that pressure. So, as an opener, or anyone in the top four, they must be thinking of cashing in on the powerplay as much as possible. I’m guessing that’s what they were thinking, but it didn’t work out.
“I think it was difficult to hit big shots as well as the sweeps and reverse sweep because some balls were keeping low on this pitch so it wasn’t easy to connect. It creates a doubt in the batsman’s mind that if he sweeps and the ball keeps low, he’ll get hit on the pad. So it depends on what line and length you bowl. Mostly our spinners kept it stump to stump so it was very difficult to execute the sweeps and reverse sweeps.
“Then, the batsmen think of hitting straight as an option but we had seen videos of their batsmen that they play a lot on the back foot, but on this kind of pitch you have to come on the front foot and play your shots.”
