Patel makes dramatic entrance by leaving batsmen guessing
Ostensibly, Axar Patel, who has now snared 18 Test wickets at 9.4 apiece, is a bowler of no great mystery. Watch a delivery or two in isolation, and Patel could be mistaken for a mundane English left-arm spinner: he bowls quickly and his main variation is the ball that does not turn.
The wonder of Patel is not what he does but how he does it. There is no discernible difference in his action between deliveries that skid on and those that turn away from right-handers. Patel’s low, roundarm release creates undercut on the ball. When the ball pitches, it will spin if it hits the seam, but skid on if the leather kisses the pitch.
Again and again, England batsmen were snared by deliveries that went straight on. Eight of Patel’s nine wickets against right-handers, out of a total match haul of 11, came with balls that did not turn. “The natural tendency for most right-handers would be for the bat to come down protecting off stump,” explains Mark Ramprakash, the former England batting coach. “Playing for a little turn means they have played outside the line.”
Yet it is the refinement of Patel’s bowling that makes batsmen so susceptible to his nonturning deliveries. He has three traits that make his ball skidding on so potent.
The first is unerring accuracy. Compared to Shahbaz Nadeem, the left-armer selected in the first Test in his absence, Patel is notably more accurate and very seldom overpitches, depriving the batsmen of release balls.
Patel’s second particular weapon is his trajectory. His round-arm action releases the ball from unusually wide of the crease. The upshot is that, when the ball does not turn, he generates considerable angle back into righthanders to beat the inside edge. Consider the wicket of Ben Foakes in the second innings: the delivery pitched outside off stump, and yet angled in so drastically that it would only just have been clipping the leg stump. Such deviation makes leaving balls against Patel perilous, in turn increasing his chances of kissing the outside edge when balls do turn. This series, England have left only two per cent of deliveries from Patel – even less than the four per cent of balls batsmen leave against Ravindra Jadeja, whose injury gave Patel his chance – compared to eight per cent from Nadeem in the first Test.
The third hallmark is pace. Patel’s average pace is 55mph, placing him on the quick side for a left-arm spinner; Nadeem bowled at 52mph in the first Test. In the second Test, one delivery from Patel even reached 62mph.
Such greater speed inhibits batsmen from using their feet to Patel and hitting the ball on the full before it has had a chance to turn – or, indeed, not turn. Joe Root suggested that it was Patel’s pace that made his skidding deliveries so lethal, because batsmen had less time to adjust. “Credit to Axar,” the England captain said. “He found a very good method on that surface.”
And so Patel’s cocktail of gifts are tailor-made to thrive on wickets offering the turn and pace of Ahmedabad. Playing on less helpful wickets will require him to adapt and learn to beat batsmen in the air as well as off the pitch. But as a template to expose every kink in England’s techniques against spin on wickets such as Ahmedabad, Patel’s method could scarcely be bettered.