Ajaz Patel fest: Kiwi twister spins a web of woe for India

MUMBAI: Ajaz Patel feels at home whenever he rolls his arm over at the Wankhede Stadium. Why shouldn’t he? After all, he was born in the city before his family migrated to New Zealand.

The first time he played for the Black Caps at the venue in 2021, he etched his name in the history books by becoming only the third bowler to take 10 wickets in a Test innings. But despite his match haul of 14/225, the visitors fell to a 372-run defeat.

On Sunday, the 36-year-old’s match figures of 11/160 set up New Zealand’s 26-run win and helped whitewash India for the first time on home turf. He took 6/57 in the second innings to add to his 5/103 first innings figures.

The likes of Richie Benaud, Derek Underwood, and Lance Gibbs dominated the India batters during their visits to India in the 1960s and the 70s and spun their teams to series wins. But since then, not many have come close to slaying the Indian line-up throughout the series. Even the great Shane Warne struggled on Indian pitches.

There have been odd eye-popping performances in between, but nothing that has left the Indians bamboozled. Take the example of Australian off-spinner Nathan Lyon, who has taken the most wickets among visiting spinners in India with 56 scalps, but of his five five-wicket hauls, only one—8/64 during the 2023 Indore Test—resulted in a win for the visitors.

The last time India lost a series at home was against England in 2012, and that was the only time when spinners managed to change the course of the series. The Three Lions' duo of Monty Panesar and Graeme Swann rattled them and, in one of the Tests at the Wankhede, snared 19 wickets between them.

Coming to the current series, India never expected that New Zealand spinners would go toe-to-toe with the likes of R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja. Patel was their lead spinner but was low on confidence, Mitchell Santner was viewed more as a white-ball specialist, and Glenn Phillips took up off-spin to boost his prospects of playing for T20 franchises.

While New Zealand batters did score enough runs, their spinners took 37 wickets between them and had a better average and strike rate than their Indian counterparts over the course of three Tests. Their bowling average was 22.45 compared to India's 24.25, and their strike rate was better at 32.7 than the Indian tweakers' 39.75.

Skipper Tom Latham was full of praise for Patel and lauded the spin unit for getting them over the line. "The confidence he (Patel) built over the last couple of Test matches has been fantastic. We always talk about trying to adapt to each surface. These two surfaces have certainly been slightly different. To get the rewards he did, we talked about trying to keep things simple," said Latham.

Patel has now taken 25 wickets at the Wankhede, which is the most by a visiting bowler at a single venue in India. In the process, he overtook Ian Botham, who had 22 scalps to his credit at the same stadium.

While Santner took the lead in Pune, Patel bowled with the same discipline in Mumbai to plot India's downfall. Even when Pant was launching into the bowlers, the left-arm spinner made sure that he maintained his composure and didn't waver from his line and length. It paid off with the keeper-batter's scalp and doused India's hopes.