Patience pays off for Patel
Black Caps spinner Ajaz Patel says ‘‘patience’’ was the key to him claiming a second five-wicket bag of his young test career, and New Zealand fighting back in the first test against Sri Lanka.
The visitors roared back into the contest on day two in Galle, with the hosts at one point 143-2 in reply to the Black Caps’ sub-par 249 firstinnings total, before Patel spun the match on its head.
The little left-armer struck right on the stroke of tea, then twice more early in the final session, as Sri Lanka collapsed to lose 5-19, before working themselves to 227-7 at stumps, trailing by 22 runs, to leave the match tensely poised.
Patel had 5-76 after bowling 29 of the 80 overs in the innings to date. It’s his second test five-wicket haul, in this his sixth test, following his 5-59 on debut against Pakistan in Abu Dhabi last November.
While back on the spin-friendly surfaces after going wicketless against Sri Lanka in the two-test home series last December, Patel noted he and his team-mates still had to be prepared to play a waiting game, and couldn’t just expect things to happen.
‘‘Even though it’s a spin-friendly wicket, you’ve just got to stay patient and ask good questions of the batsmen for long periods of time,’’ he said. ‘‘We know Sri Lankans are good players of spin, so you’ve got to respect that and make sure you put balls in good areas for long periods.
‘‘I think it’s a patience game. In these conditions, once guys are set, it can be a little bit difficult to get guys out.
‘‘Like you saw, both teams had very much in-out fields once the partnership was set, which meant you still had attacking options but you were still covering the boundaries. So I think you’ve just got to keep hanging in, wait for the batsman to make a mistake, and play the long game.
‘‘Yes, there’s turn, but it’s quite slow turn. So once the batsman’s established, they can kind of get an understanding of how much it’s going and what it’s doing.
‘‘Test cricket is a long game, and we know that on a surface like this you can build partnerships, but as soon as you lose a wicket you can lose two or three quickly, because it’s not easy for someone to come in.
‘‘We just had to make sure that we were restricting the boundary options and continue to play attackingly, but in a defensive manner, and still look to take wickets. And then we knew that once we get a wicket we can kind of take two or three quickly, and that would swing things back in our favour.’’
The 30-year-old knows a fair bit about being patient, having consistently topped the domestic wickets charts but having to bide his time before getting a national callup.
He’s now repaying that selection, following up his five-wicket effort in the warmup match against Sri Lanka A, and quickly settling into a good rhythm, finding the ideal pace at which to operate.
‘‘As a spin bowling group we all spoke about making sure we figure out what the right pace for the surface is. For me, the main focus was finding the right pace for the surface as early as I could, and then sticking to it, and building on that. And as we saw later in the day, it probably broke up a little bit more and started going even further.
‘‘But obviously [Suranga] Lakmal [on 28 not out] and [Niroshan] Dickwella [39no] played really towards the back-end there and really showed a little bit of character in the way that they applied themselves.’’