Axar Patel
Less than a week after his maiden five-wicket haul that placed him in an elusive list alongside teammate Ravichandran Ashwin, Axar Patel carried his form to Ahmedabad and picked his second five-wicket haul en route to his bowling figure of 6 for 38 as England were folded for their lowest ever the first-innings score in India.
Patel was on the money right from ball 1 that he bowled and looked most threatening with the arm ball that straightened up to deceive the batters. He dismissed Jonny Bairstow, Zak Crawley, Ben Stokes, Jofra Archer, and Stuart Broad to complete his second five-wicket haul and subsequently became the first Indian spinner to take a fi-fer in Day-Night Test and sixth overall.
He picked another, dismissing Ben Foakes, to end with a bowling figure of 6/38. It stands as the second-best bowling figure by a spinner in Day-Night Tests after Devendra Bishoo's 8 for 49 against Pakistan in Dubai in 2016.
Along with Axar, Ashwin too was among the key wicket-takers as he dismissed Joe Root, Ollie Pope and Jack Leach. The spinners, unlike in the Kolkata Test in November 2019 against Bangladesh, also a Pink-Ball Test, bowled 37.4 overs in the first innings which comprised almost 78 per cent of the deliveries bowled by India. In the first Pink-Ball Test in India, the spinners bowled just one over in the first innings and four more in the second. Ishant Sharma was the only pacer to have managed a wicket in the first innings.
Talking about the game, England opted to bat first in Ahmedabad but were folded for just 112. Crawley was the only stand-out batsman for the visitors with his attacking 84-ball knock of 53 runs.
