Day 3 at Kanpur was a perfect encapsulation of the trials and tribulations a team had to endure to win Test match in India. With each passing ball and over and session and day, new challenges proliferated like rot on mouldy bread.
It is possible to wear down pace attacks, even the English in England, the Australians in Australia, the South Africans in South Africa. But spinners do not tire as easily, which makes India – particularly in the current era – a more challenging tour than anywhere else in the world.
Tom Latham and Will Young figured out that you cannot outlast spinners. Neither can you blunt their primary weapons. They will keep coming back at you, in various combinations. R Ashwin bowled over 42 overs, Ravindra Jadeja 33, and Axar Patel 34.
Latham and Young played close to 500 balls between them. At no point did they have it easy. Young's 15 fours fetched him 60 runs, but he could only manage 25 from the remaining 199 balls. Similarly, Latham managed 55 runs in 272 balls. The scoring rate indicates how patient Latham and Young were. They eliminated all risk and waited for the bad balls, something the Indian spinners were not generous in dishing out.
The bowling was relentless. There was no breathing space. There was no weak link in the attack for New Zealand to pounce upon. And the newest member of the spin attack proved to be the deadliest.
This is only the fourth Test match for Axar Patel, the latest product from Gujarat Left-Arm Spin Pvt Ltd, which has previously bestowed upon the world Vinoo Mankad and Ravindra Jadeja, among others.
And yet, he bowled every spell like a proper Test veteran.
Axar the Test cricketer had been written off even before his career began. He was described as a man who bowled predictable darts without trying to extract turn – great assets in limited-overs cricket... but in Test matches?
'No, Axar Patel is not an alternative spinner India should be looking for. He just rolls the ball, he does not have the flight and his deliveries are very much predictable,' said Gavaskar back in 2015.
And yet, eight months into his Test career, the same predictability, the same lack of extravagant turn, the same round-arm action has yielded him five five-wicket hauls in seven innings.
A chunk of his wickets so far have fallen to the ball that pitched and straightened like a recoiled spring. Axar's bowling is living embodiment of a well-worn cliche: on a pitch with a lavish turn, one that goes straight is more lethal.
His round-arm action, coupled with judicious use of the crease, adds to his mystery. For a batter, it is very difficult to pick whether the ball slides down with the angle or straightens up.
The dismissal of Ross Taylor was a classic demonstration. Around six overs before the dismissal, Taylor faced one on a length, bowled from wide of the crease. The ball went through Taylor's legs before hitting him on the gloves. These sliders were proportionately mixed with straighteners, creating a cloud of uncertainty in the batter's mind.
Then came a length ball around off, once again from wide of the crease. Taylor followed the angle and ended up playing inside the line, only for the ball to straighten and kiss the outside edge. K.S. Bharat, who was excellent throughout the course of the day, took a great catch.
Unlike the classic left-arm spinner, Axar's seam position does not point towards the slip for a right-handed batter. He does not generate much overspin either. More often than not, the seam is almost horizontal, and he uses his middle finger as a trigger to straighten up the ball. The batters, often playing for a natural variation, gets bowled or leg-before.
'I was sticking to the basics and using the crease a bit,' he said in the post-match conference. 'My round-arm deliveries were getting something out of the track and I was optimising that a lot. That was what worked for me. The track is getting slower and there has been more turn now.'
On a slow, docile Kanpur surface, the ball stayed low whenever it landed on the leather – which was exactly what a vast majority of his balls did. Noticing this, Henry Nicholls unleashed a sweep: he was beaten by the pace, and was given out leg before. Another ball stayed low from the back of a length and snaked into the stumps to send Tom Blundell back.
Ashwin, arguably the greatest spinner in Indian history, toiled all day, using more variations in single day than most bowlers do in a lifetime. And yet, he managed to pick up just three wickets, two of them at the end of the innings. When an exasperated asked Axar what he did wrong, pat came the response: 'You have been turning the ball too much.'
Sometimes it is as simple as that.