It was a long wait for Axar Patel and it didn’t help that everyone around him had just one question for the past three years—”Why aren’t you in the Indian team?”.
But Patel was unfazed as he knew, his time would come. “I think it’s all about confidence,” said Axar, 27, who wanted to be a mechanical engineer growing up but was prodded into trying his hand at cricket by a school friend.

With his record 11 wickets in the day-night third Test against England, the left-arm spinner finally found his big moment in international cricket, seven years after he made his India debut in an ODI against Bangladesh.