Ajaz Patel is no one’s idea of a dreamy left arm orthodox spinner. He is not particularly slender, his follow through isn’t what immensely talented analysts on Twitter will make videos about, he doesn’t spin or dip or drift the ball a great deal and most of all, he plies his trade for New Zealand. New Zealand doesn’t do spin very well, multiple perfectly logical reasons rooted in history notwithstanding.
And yet, the beauty of cricket lies in the fact that there are days when a non-dreamy player can have a dreamy day or two. It’s not as if he didn’t have to work hard for his wickets but Ajaz works hard in his dreams too, I’m sure. His strength is line and length and leaving the rest to the elements - pitch, state of ball, batter’s state of mind etc. And today (and yesterday), the elements conspired to give due credit to his capacity for tirelessness not just with the ball but so visibly in the field too. The result - Laker, Kumble, Patel. Nothing which happens now in his life or cricket can take this away from him. You can’t not bask in the glory of his achievement. I know I did, dear reader. There may have been a tear or two which I hid from the public eye but thinking back now, it could well have been the case because I was bored beyond wits to see Ajaz wheeling away from one end all day long. Perfection is boring as is deep love, dear reader, and Ajaz Patel had a near perfect day today with the oohs and aahs he generated tilting the scales in favour of the perfect love.
Someone once told me that the more I learn about cricket, the more neutral I’ll become in my outlook. I’ll write to that person today and tell him they were right. Their smugness might be unbearable but the lesson they gave me is beyond reproach.
It may come across in my account above that I am ascribing almost all of Ajaz’s glory to uncontrollables like luck, dreams, elements etc. Dear reader, nothing could be further from the truth. I often think of how luck in cricket is misunderstood. Luck alone gets you nowhere without tremendous skill and application of tremendous skill. Ajaz does that almost every time he wears his Black Cap but for all the days of misfortune, the tables turned today and I was there to witness it.
Mohd. Siraj is everyone’s favorite kid in the biggest neighborhood in the town. You watch his bustling action powered by a lean frame and you think that there’s so much more to him than the sob story peddled to us. You see his follow through and you marvel at the man’s eagerness to make a mark. You see how he becomes one with the crowd to implore the Captain for a review when it’s clearly pitching outside leg and you know that when Siraj achieves something, it’s so much more than what he achieves. There will be days when his bowling will be all over the place, he will leak runs in search of the dream outswinger and he will listen to no one when they ask him to rein it in, he will make visits to the match referee’s room because he considers all of 22 yards including the danger area to be his territory. But dear reader, trust me on this - he will bounce back till he absolutely can’t and even then, he’ll try. For all the logic and analysis we apply on the outside, I am convinced that you can’t do the Siraj spell today unless there’s something unexplained. It could be the romance of the unexplained or my ignorance but either way, Siraj did bowl a jaffa to kill Taylor’s off stump today and I was there to witness it.
Ravichandran Ashley Ashwin is understood fully by no one. In between overs, there was what appeared to be a fairly unpleasant exchange of words between him and the Skipper as four overthrows had gone through in the area where he was fielding. Ashley didn’t seem like he wanted to concede he could’ve done better. Kohli has lived his entire life believing everything in cricket can be done better. The twain shall never meet but if you wanted any proof that they can co-exist, you didn’t have to wait long. It was one of those spells where overs - maidens - runs - wickets moved along in single digits only and the loudspeaker at the stadium could well have been playing deep trance music as I, your spellbound writer, was there to witness it, nay, soak it all in.
Virat Kohli can’t buy a century right now with all his riches but what he has received in dollops of unknown quantities is zest. What’s more, his zest is infectious, it makes folks on social media go gaga, it makes him the conductor of a concert happening in the stands through audience members as musicians, it makes him the doyen of the camera and the apple of the average cricket watcher’s eye. More nuanced folks talk about his selections, his tactics, his ego and more esoteric stuff. Today, it all appeared to be laughably simple - he knew exactly where he wanted each fielder to be, he knew which bowler will bowl from which end and when, he knew it long before it actually played out. The NZ batters had a torrid day but Virat, the Skipper had the kind of day you dream of when you harbour thoughts of becoming the Captain of your school cricket team. As the sun began to go down on the most lifelike seaface of Bombay, you realized how terribly you were going to miss him when he passes on the captaincy armband to someone else. Virat is the cricket stadium’s favorite child and dear reader, I won’t have it any other way.
I wrote a hearfelt piece yesterday and I mentioned somewhere that I am going to expect full forgiveness for the error I commit repeatedly i.e. treating cricket as something larger than life. I know one day doesn’t a Test make, dear reader, but if today wasn’t larger than life, then life needs to be cut down to size.
Let me try and put it in a better way - Life made love with Test cricket today at the Wankhede Stadium, Bombay. As a result, a 10fer was born as were memories for life.
Completely agree...Virat will be missed once he leaves captaincy. This we realised in the Kanpur test. For heaven's sake Virat, at least make 40s or 50s, even statpad or do whatever you can to survive as skipper. We need you.