 "The Axar Patel catch that turned the match for India at windy St Lucia")
The wind howled like it generally does when it develops a mind of its own. This wasn’t a mild waft, not a stiff breeze. It was proper wind, blustery and untamed. You wouldn’t want to be out there catching a cricket ball, among other things, unless you had to.
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Such is the lot of the professional cricketer that except for rain, he has no insurance against the elements. Cold? Tough luck. Hot and humid? Get on with it. Strong crosswinds? Hey, doesn’t that make for pleasant playing conditions?
And so, India and Australia lined up at the Daren Sammy National Cricket Stadium on Monday morning, with so much at stake. More for Australia, certainly, than their celebrated rivals, but for India too. Australia were fighting for survival, having stumbled to a humbling by Afghanistan a night and a half back. India were aspiring for a top-of-the-table finish, to keep their unbeaten streak going, to lay down the gauntlet, to make a statement.
Monday morning dawned bleak and damp, a bit of rain, the threat of more to follow. Fortunately, the forecasters got it wrong. For more than four hours in Gros Islet, play was stopped only for ten minutes, early in the match. Otherwise, the sun and the carpet of grey overhead played hide-and-seek, the wind blew furiously, but the rain stayed away. Thankfully.
When we say wind, we mean wind. Upwards of 25 kilometres per hour, not swirling and going in multiple directions like at the Kensington Oval in Bridgetown but unidirectional, from the same end of the ground to the opposite side. It wasn’t biting and cold, but it was unrelenting, uncompromising. And constant. From ball one to ball 240, losing neither intensity nor steam.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsCricket in these conditions can be tricky – tricky for the batter, challenging for the bowler, and nerve-wracking for the fielder, especially if he was expected to come under a giant skier. For the batter, it was imperative to hit in the direction of the wind, not into it; the former would carry even a mishit over the ropes, and the latter would reel in the sweetest of connections and transform a potential six into an event that ends with a ‘W’ against the bowler’s name.
For the bowler, the key was to stay away from being hit with the wind. That needed supreme mental discipline, an innate awareness of where each batter’s strengths lay and which areas to avoid. Adjustments had to be made for left- and right-handers. The margin for error was miniscule, if at all. Evidence? Twenty-four sixes in all, 15 by India, eight by Rohit Sharma alone.
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The toughest assignment was for the fielder, you suspect. Mitchell Marsh, Australia’s skipper, put down what appeared to be a sitter at short third-man when Hardik Pandya got a giant leading edge at the death against leg-spinner Adam Zampa. Marsh had shelled a more crucial catch, off Virat Kohli, in Chennai last October, a miss India’s former captain punished with a game-changing near-hundred. This one was far simpler, until you factored in the wind.
The impossible was to happen late in the game, with the result a formality, with Australia’s doom sealed. Ravindra Jadeja, by all accounts the best all-round fielder in the world currently, put down one of the easiest catches of his life, at cow corner as Pat Cummins lashed out at Hardik Pandya in the game’s final over. It came at a good pace, at a good height, right down Jadeja’s throat. Until it didn’t. As it neared him, hauled back by the wind, the ball dipped alarmingly, without warning. Jadeja’s face was a picture – of incredulity, of shock, of contrition and embarrassment. How could I, he seemed to ask.
All of which are precise reasons why Axar Patel’s grab at deep backward square-leg will be spoken about for ages. After David Warner’s first-over dismissal, Travis Head and Marsh were setting about India’s total of 205 for five. No one, not even the great Jasprit Bumrah, was spared as Head made his liking for the Indian bowling apparent all over again and Marsh muscled the ball the proverbial country mile. Runs were flowing like a river in spate; 81 had been plundered in no time when Marsh flexed his knees and swatted Kuldeep Yadav with the turn towards the square-leg boundary.
Axar was loitering a few yards inside the fence, and maybe the shot was hit flat enough for the wind not to be too much of a factor – just kidding – but it reached the tall left-hander in a flash. In an absolute flash. Like a vertical, standing high-jumper in Olympics gone by, Axar levitated, the timing of his jump impeccable, and the elevation he got extraordinary. Even so, he had to stretch out his right hand – his unnatural hand, lest we forget – to the fullest to snag the ball in the middle of his palm, a thing of such beauty that it shaded even Rohit’s masterpiece of earlier in the day.
It was the catch that turned the tide, the catch that roused India from their brief torpor, the catch that pushed Australia to the brink of elimination. Wind? Now, what’s that?
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