Axar Patel quietly emerged as one of India’s most valuable players in the T20 World Cup.
His flat trajectory, clever undercut deliveries, and sharp fielding proved crucial at key moments.
Add useful batting to the mix, and Axar once again demonstrated why he is indispensable in white-ball cricket.
For many years, he has undercut the ball and made the batter’s life difficult while completing the bat swing. For many years, with his quickish left-arm spin and flatter trajectory, he has had a slew of opponents scratching their heads in frustration. Remarkably, his economy rate has never climbed above 8.50 in any of his IPL seasons. In the just-concluded T20 World Cup, once more his economy rate stood at an impressive 8.20, alongside 11 wickets. Then you add to it his fielding as well as batting.
The above-mentioned lines serve as a description of the ubiquitous Axar Patel. In India’s World Cup-winning campaign, Axar was in the thick of things almost everywhere. In the India-Pakistan game, the only batter who looked like making a fist of the chase was Usman Khan. Enter Axar Patel. The left-arm spinner removed him, with the keeper whipping the bails off.
In the semi-final, he did not just bag the wicket of Tom Banton but also took a couple of blinders to become the essence of India’s victory, along with the incomparable Jasprit Bumrah. In the summit clash, the talk of the town was how to stop the dangerous opening duo – Tim Seifert and Finn Allen. Axar performed that task too by sending Allen back to the hut.
So, how is Axar very effective in limited-overs cricket? It is not as if he can befuddle batters with mystery spin. To understand his skill set, you have to break down his bowling mechanics. Axar bowls with more of a round-arm action and a flatter trajectory. What happens here is that there is a decent chance of his deliveries coming out scrambled, or rather, pitching on the leather part of the ball. The resultant outcome is for the ball to undercut or create more of an angle into the batter. It would also skid onto the bat. On a turning wicket, it might mean the occasional delivery gripping and turning away as well.
With the power-hitters constantly getting cramped for room, this particular trait of Axar has made him an asset in the abridged versions of the game. When Allen tried to land the pull in the World Cup final, he could only find Tilak Varma stationed in the deep. In the final T20I of the India-New Zealand bilateral series, too, Allen could only locate the fielder positioned at long-on. On both occasions, his bat swing was jammed by Axar. Even in Test cricket, on turning wickets, his attributes have made him lethal. Who can forget the mayhem caused by Axar’s deliveries in the pink-ball Test in Ahmedabad in 2021? With the passage of time, he has also learnt to vary his pace.  
There is another salient feature in his quiver – batting. Although he had limited opportunities to showcase his batting prowess in the World Cup, Axar has carved out a niche for himself as a fine player of spin.
Many moons ago, the legendary Sunil Gavaskar said to NDTV, “Axar Patel is not an alternative spinner India should be looking for. He just rolls the ball; he does not have the flight, and his deliveries are very predictable. He does not turn the ball unless the pitch is favourable. He is slightly slower than medium pace.”
The same cricketer said this to the host broadcaster during the World Cup: “At the highest level, temperament separates the greats from the good. With his batting and bowling, Axar is going to be one of India’s great players.”
We are not here to take a dig at one of the greats of the game. In fact, if you zoom in on Gavaskar’s comments on Axar from a decade ago, they make sense. However, Axar has converted those very limitations into strengths – a testament to his work ethic and perseverance. And those virtues turned out to be the cornerstone of how Axar penned his own success story amidst the Bumras and Samsons of the world in India’s epoch-making World Cup campaign.