Axar Patel (right) sits out IND vs SA T20 World Cup Super 8 match (ANI Photos)

India captain Suryakumar Yadav revealed that the team went with the same playing XI for the Super 8 game against South Africa on Sunday, which meant vice-captain Axar Patel was left out again, with Washington Sundar keeping his spot. After losing the toss, Surya admitted he wanted to bat first but accepted the toss result, calling Axar’s omission a tough call.

“I was actually looking to bat first, but it’s okay, and we’re happy to bowl first. It’s very harsh on Axar Patel, but we’re going with the same team – just a tactical decision, so no changes from the last game,” he said at the toss. The decision sparked strong reactions on social media, with many fans questioning Axar’s exclusion.“Can someone tell me, why Axar Patel is dropped with his OG T2OI performances?” One fan wrote on X.“I have another question, can somebody tell me why Washington Sundar is not bowling to David Miller, if he was selected over Axar with lefties excuse?Does anything make sense under Gambhir?”Similar sentiments among fans over the Axar Patel omission call followed.In the match, South Africa had a shaky start after opting to bat. Jasprit Bumrah and Arshdeep Singh struck early, reducing them to 20/3 in just four overs. However, David Miller and Dewald Brevis staged a strong comeback, attacking India’s bowlers and shifting the momentum.Miller took on Varun Chakravarthy and Arshdeep Singh with powerful boundaries, while Brevis joined in with aggressive shots against Washington Sundar and others. The pair added quick runs and pushed the scoring rate up, helping South Africa recover to 84/3 at the halfway stage. Nevertheless, South Africa posted a strong total of 187/7 in their 20 overs after choosing to bat against India. After losing early wickets, Miller (63 off 35) and Brevis (45 off 29) led a crucial recovery, while Stubbs (44* off 24) provided a late surge. Bumrah was the standout bowler with 3/15, supported by Arshdeep’s 2/28, but India still face a challenging chase.

AHMEDABAD: In the last week of Feb in 2021, Axar Patel’s international career truly got rolling here at the revamped Narendra Modi stadium when he played the lead role in demolishing England in the Test series. The three preceding years out of the Indian team had already transformed him as a cricketer. Five years later, he will be stepping on to his home turf as a core member of the leadership group when the T20 World Cup enters its business end with India taking on South Africa on Sunday. Go Beyond The Boundary with our YouTube channel. SUBSCRIBE NOW!In a chat with TOI in Jan, Axar claimed those three years out of the Indian team helped him identify the areas to work on to be a better person and understand what he needed to become a better cricketer.

Axar’s carefree and funny-to-the-bone on-screen demeanour, often ending up as memes, gains more traction on social media. He likes to keep everything around him as uncomplicated as possible. That said, for all the riches he has earned through cricket, he prefers building a new swanky house in his hometown in Nadiad which is around 60 km from Ahmedabad. He rushes to his comfort place in Nadiad when he isn’t with the Indian team. Yet, the process he follows to stay on top as an international cricketer is as rigorous and detailed as any. The extensive training sessions are all scheduled at the GS Patel Stadium in the Kheda district. It’s just that he has formed a safe and strong core team outside Indian cricket. Leading that team is his wife Meha, charting out his diet. “Meha is a qualified dietician. Even if he is travelling with the Indian team, he gets every meal cleared by Meha,” Axar’s childhood friend and confidant Keval Patel in Nadiad told TOI. “He comes gets a longish break from the Indian team maybe a couple of times in a year. He loves to eat cheese vada paav and laze with us when he comes here. Meha doesn’t stop him from eating but adjusts the next few meals accordingly,” Keval mentioned. Much of Axar’s evolution as a cricketer and as a batter in particular happened at the GS Patel stadium. Axar took it on himself to renovate the gym with very basic facilities and turn it into a high-end fitness centre for the youngsters in the region. “He usually follows the routine given to him by the support staff in the BCCI. But he realised that the local kids also need better facilities. Five years ago, he said he will fund the renovation of the gym. The gym has pictures of all the top Indian cricketers mounted on the wall,” said Keval. Soon, Keval talked about Axar’s meticulous cricket training drills. Before joining the Indian team for this T20 World Cup, he had a session with the Delhi Capitals team in Delhi where he trained for batting after the 15th over of the innings. He was probably intimated by the team management he would be needed to bat lower down the order unlike in the preceding assignments. “He plans training sessions according to different batting situations. He bats for four-five hours a day for the last five-six years. On certain days, he will be practicing against the new ball. On other days, he will bat on the centre square, practicing only power-hitting,” Keval revealed. In the chat with TOI, Axar said he regained confidence in his batting after MS Dhoni asked him to think like a regular batter around 2018 and he could work on it with Ricky Ponting’s backing at the Capitals from 2019. And what drills does he do for his bowling? “He just does spot bowling. His only focus is to get his pitching right. He will be hitting the same spot for a long period of time, varying pace and angles,” Keval said. Axar’s utility batting has overshadowed Axar the left-arm spinner in the last year or so made more headlines in the past year. But it’s hard to discount his consistent contributions with the ball after enduring a deluge of barbs from experts for the first half of his international career. In 2021, he had told TOI that he started believing he must be a special bowler to have made it this far without being a conventional left-arm spinner. “I did talk with R Ashwin but he does some really deep thinking. I can’t do that,” Axar had joked. It’s been a long journey for India’s one of the most understated cricketers in the last five years. The next two and a half weeks could propel him to becoming a poster boy of Indian cricket.

Ahmedabad: India may have ended the league phase of the World Cup unbeaten, but there are a few glitches they need to iron out before taking on much stronger sides in the Super 8 stage. India’s catching has been below par, but the most glaring shortcoming has been their batters’ failure to dominate spin, a concern that has also contributed to their home Test defeats in recent years. Two major reasons India have been bogged down by rival spinners—especially off-spinners—have been the presence of so many left-handers in the lineup and the poor form of explosive opener Abhishek Sharma, who has registered three consecutive ducks.

So far in the tournament, India have faced 42 overs of spin, scoring 315 runs at a run rate just above seven. Spinners have already accounted for 15 Indian wickets. On Wednesday, Dutch off-spinner Aryan Dutt returned figures of 2/19 in four overs. Thriving on some fine spells by their spinners, Associate teams like the USA and the Netherlands have given India a scare before eventually going down. India’s assistant coach Ryan ten Doeschate acknowledged that teams were targeting them with finger spin, particularly given that the Men in Blue have several left-handers in the lineup. The entire top three (Abhishek Sharma, Ishan Kishan, and Tilak Varma) are left-handed, while Shivam Dube, Rinku Singh, and Axar Patel add to that count. “The Dutch guys took pace off the ball a lot of the time. And obviously teams are bowling a lot of finger spin to us, with so many left-handers in our lineup. That is a challenge. It has made it easier for the opposition. We don’t have many options. We’ve got Sanju sitting on the side,” ten Doeschate said. It is a problem area India need to address before their Super 8 opener against South Africa here on Sunday. The Proteas boast quality spin options in captain Aiden Markram, George Linde, and Keshav Maharaj. Even West Indies and Zimbabwe—the other teams in their group—are well stocked in the spin department and pose a threat that cannot be ignored. The Windies, as they showed in their league-stage match against England at the Wankhede Stadium, have an effective spin trio in Gudakesh Motie, Akeal Hosein, and Roston Chase. Zimbabwe’s four-pronged spin attack of Sikandar Raza, Ryan Burl, Graeme Cremer, and Wellington Masakadza can also spring a surprise. Ten Doeschate pointed out that it was finger spin that was troubling India’s usually aggressive batters. “I’d say finger spin (is the problem). If you take the combined figures, Pakistan bowled 14 overs of finger spin in the last game and, off the top of my head, it was something like 4/78. So it’s not a great number. Colombo was a particularly difficult wicket. The numbers against the Netherlands improved towards the back end. But again, Dutt bowling four overs for what he did was a big challenge,” he said, adding that bigger grounds had increased India’s woes. “I think these two venues in particular—with a bigger boundary here and obviously a slower wicket in Colombo—exaggerate that. But it’s something we’re going to have to focus on. With the amount of finger spin we’re going to get in the next three games, it’s going to be important that we dominate that phase of the game,” he added. Ten Doeschate felt that India’s batters have also looked vulnerable because the league-stage wickets have offered some assistance to spinners. “It’s not a sudden thing. The wickets we’ve played bilateral series on over the last 18 months have been really good batting tracks. Then, as soon as you come to a wicket that offers a bit of hold, it becomes a challenge. “So it might look like a short-term issue. On better wickets, you won’t see it—you can hit through the ball with more confidence. But the point is we need plans for wickets that do hold and where the boundaries are bigger. We need a clear game plan to deal with that threat,” he said. Given all the talk of ‘intent’ and a ‘fearless’ approach in T20Is, India’s post-Powerplay drop in run rate has also been very surprising.