Make it difficult for England "without doing something remarkable," according to Axar's powerplay strategy.

He stepped up with both the game and wicket to KO defending champion England in a difficult pitch during a stop-start match.

When Axar Patel got the game in the third over of England's fight of 172, he had already been told by his commander Rohit Sharma, India's leading scorer, that the ball was keeping minimal and sliding, and hitting the big shots was n't simple. India were now feeling assured after posting a total that had" 10- 15 more" runs on a pitch hard for batting, and Axar thought since the batters were going to attack him early on, it was best to not do anything "extraordinary" and push the batters to try and do various things, which may work in his favour.

That's exactly what happened when Axar sent down his first shipping, from around the batsman to England commander Jos Butter, who went for a slow blow and ended up popping the ball to bowler Rishabh Pant. Axar then went on to take down Jonny Bairstow and Moeen Ali in consecutive overs to leave England on 46 for 4 and finish with a stifling 3 for 23, which earned him the Player- of- the- Match award.

" I had n't really planned to get a wicket on the first ball", Axar said with a laugh at the press conference. The key to my approach was to hit the ball in the appropriate spots. Obviously, when you play knockouts, you want to start and finish well with the first and last ball.

" The plan in the powerplay was the usual. It's tough to bowl in the powerplay, but when you know that you are getting help from the wicket, then without thinking much, without doing anything extraordinary, I thought that the more I keep it simple, the easier it would be for me. We discussed how difficult it is to bat against [because it's not an easy wicket ] in the dressing room, and I was aware that the batsman would bat at me. Due to the ball not coming off the bat nicely, it was n't going to be easy to hit me down the ground. My plan was to make it difficult for them, force them to think of playing some other shots, and, that's what happened on the first ball.

"I think we knew we could defend 170, it was a par score. The way the wicket was behaving, and Rohit bhai said after he finished batting that it was very difficult to hit big shots because the odd ball was spinning, staying low, skidding as well. We thought that 150-160 was also a very good score which we could have defended. So, when we made 170, we knew that we had 10-15 runs extra."

When Axar batted at No. 8 for six balls from Chris Jordan and Jofra Archer in the death overs, he saw that they were taking the pace off, and putting the balls away was n't easy at all, though he struck a six off one of Jordan's slower ones.

" Obviously, I got a clue from that as to what to do and what not to", Axar said of the mental notes he made while batting. " They would have found it simpler if they had kept their pace." Bowling at good areas was a must. When I pitched the ball for a long time, nobody has struck me. It was important to pitch the ball on a good length and line and that's what I tried to do in the powerplay".

His first delivery, to Buttler, was n't particularly quick at 91.5kmh. At 94.5 kmh, he still maintained his accuracy by pitching the ball off the stump with a low bounce to knock the ball over the off stump. His third wicket was a reward, along with some luck, after he had conceded just 11 runs in his first two overs. England were 46 for 3 after seven overs and Moeen on 8 off nine balls when he tried to clip a delivery from Axar off his pads and took off for what he thought was a single. However, when Moeen ventured out of the crease, the ball had only deflected off his pad to Pant, who had whipped the bails off.

When asked if the England batters got more anxious with the spinners than other teams, Axar replied," It's also about pressure," adding that" when you are chasing, and you know that the wicket is helping the bowlers in that pressure." So, as an opener, or anyone in the top four, they must be thinking of cashing in on the powerplay as much as possible. I'm guessing that's what they were thinking, but it did n't work out.

Because some balls on this pitch were keeping low, it was n't easy to connect, so I think it was difficult to hit big shots as well as the sweeps and reverse sweeps. The batsman is unsure whether or not he will be hit on the pad if he sweeps and the ball keeps low. So it depends on your bowling length and line. Mostly our spinners kept it stump to stump so it was very difficult to execute the sweeps and reverse sweeps.

" Then, the batsmen think of hitting straight as an option but we had seen videos of their batsmen that they play a lot on the back foot, but on this kind of pitch you have to come on the front foot and play your shots".