The Indian men’s cricket team defeated West Indies by two wickets in the second ODI on Sunday (July 24) to go 2-0 up and seal the three-match series. It was a closely fought contest between the two former World Cup winners, and India only managed to reach home in the fourth ball of the final over, when Axar Patel finished the game with a six off Kyle Mayers’ bowling.
India were struggling at 205 for 5 in 38.4 overs, still short of their 312-run target by 107 runs, when Axar Patel came to the crease as a number seven batter. The left-handed bowling all-rounder is a handy lower-order batter but hasn’t made any significant contributions in the 39 matches he had played before Sunday, but in Port of Spain, he was on a mission and scored an unbeaten 64 runs from just 35 balls to seal a sensational win for India.
He remained unbeaten till the end and hammered five sixes and three fours. It was his first fifty-plus score in the 50-over format of the game for India.
After India’s win in the second ODI, which also saw the Men in Blue secure their 12th back-to-back bilateral ODI series win over the Caribbean team, BCCI uploaded a video of Axar and Avesh Khan chatting with seasoned spinner Yuzvendra Chahal, in which the trio can be heard talking about the tension-filled last few overs and how Patel’s sixes took India over the line.
“I bit all my nails off. The pressure was too much sitting outside. Itna pressure toh shaadi ke time nahi tha,” Chahal said to the duo before they joined in and talked about their strategies while batting.
In one of the segments, Chahal even joked that when Axar was batting, he got reminded of his younger days, when he used to bat like that. To which the bowling all-rounder replied, “I thought if I get out early, then Chahal bhai will have to come and do the job. So, I shouldn’t trouble him much and I do the job.”
Axar won the Player of the Match award for his batting as well as dismissing Shamarah Brooks in his nine-over spell.
