Axar, Sweeps, foot marks, and openers

The final day from Nagpur

Axar Patel in FC cricket

Here is a question for you, can Axar Patel bat? I mean we know he has batting talent, this innings proves that. He is known as an all-rounder, but at this level, he does look more like a player who can be handy rather than a proper all-rounder. Of course with Jadeja and Ashwin, that helps because he can come in even lower.

But over the last few years in first-class cricket - and even T20 if you check that record - he really hasn’t been as good as he showed early in his career. As his bowling has gotten better, his batting has slipped.

Axar Patel vs offspin

So my next question is, can he face off-spin? Well, before this Test he averaged 40 against left-arm orthodox and 15 against off-spin. He almost doubled it in this knock. But I checked T20 as well, he averages 12, with a strike rate of 84 there. I would have to say that there is no evidence really before this innings that Axar could play off-spin.

So all credit to him. Some interesting things to note. He faced a lot of seam bowling early on. The new ball was there, and so he didn’t face the rock-hard ball with off-spin from both ends until he’d been in for 16 overs and was set. Also, he started really slow, he was four from 33 balls. And when he did face the off-spinners, he basically sweated on length, when it was short, he cut, and when it was overpitched he drove. In between, he just played carefully. Obviously, the Australian bowlers were tired when he came out, and the pitch was at its best. But this was a great innings considering he had off-spin at both ends, there was nowhere to hide.

There is one other thing to note here, when you look at the off-spinners Axar has faced, there is a pattern here. Lyon, Murphy and Somerville have not dismissed Axar yet, but Mehidy Hasan and Moeen Ali have. They are both side spinners of the ball, whereas the other three are all basically Australian-style offspinners. Somerville is a New Zealand, who played shield cricket, but he bowls more like an Australian finger spinner than a typical Kiwi version.

So far, this appears to matter for Axar’s batting but has a far bigger impact on Australia and this Test.

Nathan Lyon by location

There are three places in the world where Nathan Lyon has a bowling average better than 30. New Zealand, West Indies and Bangladesh. So that means that only in Bangladesh is this spinner averaging sub-30, and that is only from two Tests.

When you look at him by continent you can see he is a better bowler in the West Indies and England than he is in Asia. Part of this is because he typically bowls a bit slower. But he has worked to fix that. The bigger one is that he likes some bounce, and doesn’t get that in Asia.

So that means that Australia has a floor-raising spinner who can bowl anywhere in the world, but when they get to Asia, they need a destroyer, and he just isn’t. How different did he look from the Indian spinners who put side spin on the ball? They are just, as cricketers would say, different gravy.

Usman Khawaja