Asia Cup 2025: Axar Patel, the indispensable white-ball behemoth who is every captain's dream

Rohit Sharma used him judiciously in the Caribbean last year, Suryakumar Yadav is now reaping the rewards of Axar’s consistency and stump-to-stump lines.

Dubai: In an era gone by, classical finger-spinners were celebrated and romanticised.

The great EAS Prasanna and Bishan Singh Bedi attracted as many eyeballs and encomiums as BS Chandrasekhar, the wristy magician responsible for India’s first Test victory in England, at the Oval in 1971.

With time, finger-spin has come to be taken almost for granted. Unless one is Muttiah Muralitharan, a wrist-fuelled finger-spinner – if that makes sense – or R Ashwin, as adept at talking up his craft as he is working batters out or Nathan Lyon, him of 562 Test wickets, finger-spinners have not received their due. They are not complaining, not loudly and publicly in any case, but if they feel hard done by, it isn’t without reason.

The prime example of a gun finger-spinner who hasn’t received the plaudits bestowed on his glamorous wrist-using colleagues is Axar Patel. Maybe some of it has to do with the fact that he goes about his business without fuss, that he does not talk a good talk even though he walks a fabulous walk.

Within the Indian limited-overs ecosystem, the 31-year-old is a vitally influential performer. The outside world is entranced by the dexterity of Kuldeep Yadav and Varun Chakravarthy, but Axar is a towering personality in his own right, a bank who can be relied upon to hold up his end of the bargain 95 times out of 100.

Axar has fallen way down the pecking order in Test cricket. Twenty-seven wickets in his first three outings, at home against England in 2021, indicated a coming of age in the five-day game but middling to modest subsequent displays have seen his Test graph nosedive alarmingly. But drape him in the India blue and toss him the white ball, and Axar becomes an entirely different beast altogether.

There’s more to Axar than just canny left-arm spin. He is one of many floaters in the batting group, used differently in different circumstances. When Virat Kohli got into a rut in the final of the T20 World Cup last year against South Africa, for instance, Axar took it upon himself to provide the momentum, smashing four sixes on his way to a 31-ball 47 which dominated a fourth-wicket stand of 72 with the former captain.

In the 50-over Champions Trophy this year, when he primarily batted at No. 5 ahead of KL Rahul, he weighed in with crucial knocks in the semifinal and the final, setting the stage for Rahul and Hardik Pandya to deliver the knockout blows.

That versatility, allied with his left-arm spin that is as much at home in the Powerplay as at any other stage of the innings, has made Axar an indispensable white-ball behemoth.

Since the beginning of 2024, Axar has taken 29 wickets in 22 innings; despite being pressed into service in challenging phases, he has conceded only 6.80 runs per over on an average which, allied with a wicket every 14 deliveries, makes him every captain’s dream. Rohit Sharma used him judiciously in the USA and the Caribbean last year, Suryakumar Yadav is now reaping the rewards of Axar’s consistency and stump-to-stump lines.

Axar’s bowling is steeped in simplicity, but clearly, it isn’t a simple puzzle to crack, not with his subtle changes in angle, in pace and in his use of the crease.

He won’t mind too much if the spotlight is on Kuldeep and Chakravarthy. He knows his value; more importantly, he knows how much his teammates value him and at a certain level, that counts for more than external approbation.