Axar Patel’s powerplay plan: Make it difficult for England ‘without doing anything unusual’

That is exactly what happened when Axar sent his first wicket, from near the wicket of England captain Jos Butter, who went to turn it and ended up passing the wicket keeper Rishabh Pant. Axar then dismissed Jonny Bairstow and Moeen Ali in successive overs to leave England 46 for 4 and finish with 3 for 23, earning him the man of the match award.

“I didn’t really plan to get a wicket in the first ball,” said Axar with a laugh at the press conference. “My idea was to put the ball in the right places, obviously when you play knockouts you want to start and finish well with the first and last ball.

“The plan in the powerplay was normal. It’s difficult to bowl in the powerplay, but if you know you’re getting help from the wicket, without thinking too much, without doing anything unusual, I thought if I keep it simple, it will be easy for me. We talked about it in the dressing room that it’s not an easy wicket [for batting], and I knew the hitter was going to attack me. It was not going to be easy to hit me down and hitting back was not easy because the ball was not coming well on the bat. My plan was to make it difficult for them, force them to think about playing other shots, and, that’s what happened on the first ball.

“I think we knew we could defend 170, it was an even score. The way the wicket behaved, with Rohit bye he said after finishing hitting it was very difficult to hit big shots because the unusual ball was spinning, always on the ground, and sliding with it. We thought 150-160 was also the best score we could defend. So, when we made 170, we knew we had 10-15 more runs.”

When Axar batted at number 8 in the six balls of Chris Jordan and Jofra Archer in the death overs, he saw that they were taking it away, and putting the balls was not easy, even though he hit a six off one. of slow Jordan.

“Obviously I got a clue of what to do and what not to do,” said Axar about the mental points he made while batting. “Giving pace would have made it easier for them. It was good to bowl in the right places. No one has beaten me when I bounced the ball well. It was important to bounce the ball with a good length and line. And that’s what I tried to do in the powerplay.”

His first delivery, to Buttler, was not too quick at 91.5kmh. When he bowled another quick one to Bairstow at 94.5kmh, he still held on to his accuracy by pitching it on the stumps, and the ball bounced up with a low bounce to hit the stumps. His third wicket was the reward, and luck, after he conceded 11 runs in his first two overs. England were 46 for 3 after seven overs and Moeen was 8 off nine balls when he tried to cut Axar’s delivery off his pads and got away from what he thought was a single. But the ball was deflected only to Pant, who bailed as Moeen came out of the crease.

“And it’s about pressure,” Axar said when asked if England’s batsmen were more worried about facing spinners than other teams, “when you’re chasing, and you know the wicket helps the bowlers with that pressure. So, as you open, or whoever is in the top four, they have to think about making money on the powerplay as much as possible I think that’s what they were thinking, but it didn’t work.

“I think it was difficult to hit big shots like sweeps and reverse sweeps because some balls were always low in this field so it was not easy to connect. This creates doubt in the batsman’s mind that if he sweeps and the ball stays low, he will hit the pad. So it depends on what line and length you hit it. Mainly our spinners kept the off stump so it was very difficult to sweep and reverse sweep.

“Then, the batsmen think of hitting straight as an option but we have seen videos of the batsmen playing more on the back foot, but on this type of pitch you have to come on the front foot and play your shots.”