A Nightmare on Turning Tracks
Axar’s style of bowling is tailor-made for spin-friendly pitches as the left-arm spinner’s angle leaves the batsmen guessing all the time. Which one comes in with the angle? Which one leaves the right-hander after pitching? No idea!
What adds to the theatre is that Axar possesses a brilliant arm ball which is lethal in itself. It becomes even more dangerous as the lanky spinner delivers it, not with a vertical, but a horizontal seam which makes it almost impossible for the batsmen to read in the air.
As a result, accomplished men with bats – more like toothpicks – in hand are left to decipher it off the surface. The fact that Axar’s stock ball is around 90 kph and that he undercuts the ball often, it’s not the easiest thing to do on a spinning wicket, and hence, the record-breaking success.
The harder pink ball, with extra lacquer, only helped his cause.
“I feel there’s a little more glare (shine) on the pink ball, because of which the ball was skidding a…