India vs New Zealand: Has Axar Patel carved out his own space in the limited-overs’ team?

Scene 1: After sitting out the Sri Lanka series, Ravindra Jadeja got a chance to get back in the blue uniform against Australia. Or so he thought, for he had been called up to replace injured Axar Patel for the first three One-Day Internationals (ODIs). Jadeja didn’t play that first game because he couldn’t reach Chennai in time from Rajkot. He didn’t play the next two matches either, and was duly left out of the remaining games again, as Patel returned. This staggering experimentation – if it can even be called that any longer – with India’s spin wares continued.

Scene 2: Patel is now a consistent part of a young spin troika that represents the Men in Blue. A lot of times Virat Kohli prefers to play with both Yuzvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav. At other times, he finds use for left-arm spin too. Take the New Zealand ODI series for example. The Black Caps did what the Australians couldn’t, and countered the two wrist-spinners in the first ODI in Mumbai.

Tom Latham was simply exceptional that night — on this tour actually — and the Indian team management needed an immediate response. It was in that light that Yadav was left out of the second ODI in Pune and Patel drafted in as second spinner. And voila, he did the trick, as Latham was bowled trying to sweep.

​Skipper’s trust

“Axar uses his height very well. It allows him to bowl one particular line to the batsmen,” explained Kohli during the Australia series. It could be seen in how the Indian skipper included Patel in his plans against the Kiwis. In Mumbai, Kohli had not used Kedar Jadhav on account of dew. In Pune, Jadhav was India’s first-change bowler.

Holding Patel back was a ploy to counter Latham. In Mumbai, the left-hander had swept the spinners away and hauled New Zealand to victory. Patel’s straight line and consistent length didn’t give Latham any more leeway in attacking the spinners with that particular shot. It was a perfect plan, based on captain’s foresight and bowler’s ability and execution.

It puts into perspective how India have used their spinners since the Sri Lanka tour. There is a desire for more adventure and the intent is to attack at all times. The motive is more to take wickets in the middle overs and not just check runs.

On slower tracks, which offer more turn, the two wrist-spinners are a perfect pairing. It doesn’t work on pitches where the batsmen have an upper hand, thanks largely to conditions. Throughout the New Zealand series, we saw better batting wickets than those laid out against Australia, another additional but key difference. The dew further helped the batsmen. It is in these conditions that Kohli likes to exert more control on proceedings, and Patel comes into the equation ahead of Yadav or Chahal, as the case may be.

Since that Lanka tour, Patel has picked eight wickets in 10 ODIs at a strike-rate of 45.2 and economy hovering around 4.5 runs-per-over. Comparisons with Jadeja are inevitable, and it is noteworthy that he too had taken eight wickets in his last 10 ODIs. Statistics do not tell the complete picture though. Jadeja is an overworked spinner, and the burden of carrying India’s Test hopes will only increase as the overseas cycle begins in January.

Even so, that Jadeja’s limited-overs’ form also tapered off in the summer isn’t the only reason behind Patel’s continued presence in the team. Whether Jadeja has been discarded for good is a separate debate altogether. Yet, it cannot be denied that his absence does allow Patel enough room to breathe and grow out of his shadow as a proper, alternate left-arm option. And so, the question aptly stands, has Patel done enough in his capacity as a stand-alone spinner?

Specialist spinner, not all-rounder

On merit, Patel’s role has to be judged in the bowling aspect alone. There is a strong tendency to get carried away and thrust the additional responsibility of an all-rounder on his slender shoulders. But that strategy is fraught with risk, for it has been tried before and resulted in Patel losing his spot in the playing eleven and the squad. That was two years ago, in the build-up to the 2015 ODI World Cup, when Jadeja’s fitness was under some doubt.

Playing in Australia back then, Patel had proven to be a useful bowler, but his shortcomings in both batting and fielding in alien conditions didn’t escape scrutiny. It cannot be denied that at present, he has improved, bridging that gap on the basis of experience. But the underlying importance of his bowling ability as a sole trait cannot be lost. In batsmen-friendly English conditions two years from now, India will need a left-arm spinner to exert himself on proceedings. With his slower drift through the air, and consistency in line and length, Patel can be that guy.

Answering the aforementioned question thus, in the short-term at least, Patel is justifying his continued selection. And this is not an assumption solely based on the Indian team management’s policy of promoting these young spinners. “It creates us a strong pool for us for the World Cup,” outlined Kohli during the Australia series.

Instead, it is from a long-term perspective. Sometime during the next six months or so, even as early as the South Africa tour, selectors will start pruning their long-list of World Cup options. It can be ascertained at this juncture that Patel should be able to make that cut, easily.