After winning the Border-Gavaskar Trophy at home against Australia 2 – 1 (4), India has been unbeaten at home against any team in the world for the last 10 years. However, winning the 3rd match of the series, Australia avoided a whitewash and qualified for the Test Championship final. Although the last match ended in a draw, India qualified for the final with the help of New Zealand’s defeat of Sri Lanka and will face Australia again to win the trophy on June 7 at the London Oval Cricket Ground.
Earlier in the series, Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja shone as spin bowling all-rounders and were instrumental in India’s victory and were awarded the Man of the Series award. Similarly, Akshar Patel Ashwin and Jadeja, who were selected to play as the 2nd spinner, did not have a big impact on the bowling as they took a bunch of wickets. But in batting, he scored 84 and 74 runs in the first two matches held at Nagpur and Delhi on a pitch that rotated in a chaotic manner, and he was the dark horse to win the series by scoring early wins and scoring 74 runs.
Key Technique:
He has scored a total of 264 runs and has become the 2nd highest run scorer in this series. Former players like Saba Karim and Dinesh Karthik openly praised Axar Patel as the main reason why India won the series 2 – 1 (4). In this case, the former Australian captain Ricky Ponting, who says that he has been watching Axar Patel since he was young since he joined the Mumbai team in the 2013 IPL series until now he is playing in the Delhi team, said that despite his talent, he stumbled without knowing the right batting technique.
But after becoming the coach of the Delhi team, he said that in the past few years, he had made changes in the hip and shoulder areas and taught him the important technique in batting. Here’s what he said about it on the ICC website.
“I have known Axar Patel for a long time. Especially when I first joined Mumbai Indians when he was a very young guy. Then I learned that he has some really special batting skills. However, barring the last few years, he hasn’t shown it in IPL or international cricket. Because of that we made some minor changes in his batting on a technical level.”
“Especially we opened up his hips and shoulders a little bit to allow him to bat with a wider angle. Because of that he used his chest a bit more and got a chance to face the left-arm fast bowlers a bit more.” According to him, Akshar Patel did not perform so well with the bat in the early days.
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However, after joining the Delhi team in the year 2020, he has shown good performance in batting and is sharing a stable place in the Indian team. It is commendable to have Ricky Ponting as the coach behind this.