Axar Patel on dismissing Jos Buttler: Left-arm spinner Axar Patel shone through brightly with the ball in the T20 World Cup semi-final against England in Guyana by taking three important wickets that helped India defend their total of 171 and win by a whopping 68 runs.
India thumped England in an utterly dominating fashion in Guyana – taking a sweet revenge of their 10-wicket loss against the same opposition two years ago in the T20 World Cup 2022 semi-final in Adelaide – to seal their place in the final, where they will meet Aiden Markram’s South Africa in Barbados on Saturday. Both India and South Africa have been unbeaten in the tournament so far.
Captain Rohit Sharma top-scored in the match with 57 runs off 39 balls with the help of six fours and two sixes. Batting for almost 14 overs, Rohit had assessed that the pitch was really challenging to play strokes across the line – because of the ball sticking into the surface, turning considerably, and also staying low – and relayed the same message to Axar, when he introduced him in the fourth over of England’s innings with the dangerous Jos Buttler on strike.
Axar Patel on dismissing Jos Buttler:
On the first ball that Axar bowled, Buttler attempted a reverse sweep and gloved it to wicket-keeper Rishabh Pant.
Speaking in the post-match press conference, Axar said,
“I think we knew we could defend 170, it was a par score. The way the wicket was behaving, and Rohit bhai said after he finished batting that it was very difficult to hit big shots because the odd ball was spinning, staying low, skidding as well. We thought that 150-160 was also a very good score which we could have defended. So, when we made 170, we knew that we had 10-15 runs extra.”
“I hadn’t really planned to get a wicket on the first ball. My mindset was to put the ball in the right areas,”
Patel said with a laugh.
After taking down the big scalp of Buttler, Axar rocked the stumps of Jonny Bairstow before having Moeen Ali stumped. He finished with figures of 3/23 that broke the England top-order before Kuldeep struck thrice to sink the defending champions further.
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