Axar Patel Reflects on Humble Beginnings and Career-Defining Moments After T20 World Cup Victory

Mumbai. “I had never felt anything like that before that day,” smiles Axar Patel, shaking his head. At my request, he is watching a reel on his Instagram, which is a video of the victory parade held in Mumbai after India won the T20 World Cup on July 4, 2024.

“No one other than the 15 players present there can understand what that feeling was like. It was completely different—the experience, the atmosphere, the praise we received, the sea of people. I had never seen such a huge crowd screaming ‘India! India!’ in one voice,” he says.

Like most cricketers in India, Axar also grew up playing gully cricket. He grew up playing cricket with a tennis ball and was fascinated by the sport from a young age. He used to sleep with his ball and bat. If any of them got lost, he would cry until his parents bought him a new one.

His father, Rajesh, had the biggest influence on his cricket career. “Even when Zimbabwe and West Indies were playing, he would stay up all night to watch,” Axar recalls, “That same passion easily transferred to me.”

Once he felt he was playing well, his confidence grew even more. He started playing with his cousin, Sankship, who was nine years older than him, and his friends. Initially, the older boys let him play only a few balls because he was small. “Once I started playing well, they decided I had to be in the team,” Axar says.

Due to his artistic batting and strong leg-side play, he was nicknamed ‘Jayawardene of Nadiad.’ “In gully cricket, there aren’t many places to score runs, but the leg side was easy for me,” he adds.

He quickly became so good that he started earning a remuneration of 500 rupees per match in the tennis-ball tournaments Sankship played during the summer. When he moved to a new school in the eighth grade, he became close friends with six or seven boys.

Once, one of them proposed registering a team for an inter-school tournament and practicing. “I said, ‘Let’s just practice in the gully,’” Axar recalls. Only then did he find out—the tournament was to be played with a leather ball.

“I asked him, ‘Have you ever seen a leather ball up close?’” Axar asked them to withdraw the team name. But the Kheda District Cricket Association warned that withdrawing the name would result in a three-year ban. Ultimately, they decided to take the field even though they were bound to lose.

They sought help from a senior player who played club cricket. He taught them the basics of playing with a leather ball. “Until then, I didn’t even know what a leather ball was,” Axar says, “We practiced with a cork ball on a concrete pitch.”

The team had only two kit bags, one belonging to the school and the other to the player who had keeping gloves. He insisted he wouldn’t play unless he was made the keeper. Since no one was ready to open, Axar, who was a fast bowler at the time, started both the batting and bowling.

In the first match, he was out for 20 runs. “The fast bowler from St. Mary’s School got me out with a choking delivery,” he says, “But I wasn’t accepting it.” Eventually, the team’s senior player convinced him and brought him off the field.

It was a two-day match where the result was decided based on the first innings lead. In the second innings, Axar was determined to face the same bowler. “I hit five fours in five consecutive balls,” he recalls.

Impressed by his talent, officials from the Kheda Cricket Association called him to the district camp. Although he filled out the form, he was initially unwilling to go. Only after his father’s insistence did he start going to the camp a few days a week. At that time, his dream was not to become a cricketer. “I wanted to become an engineer,” Axar says, “I just played for fun.” Until the tenth grade, he was always among the ‘Top-3’ in his class.

Seeing his elder brother Sankship complete his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Computer Science, he thought he should do the same or even better. “I had confidence, but I wasn’t serious about cricket,” he admits.

Soon he was selected for the district team and became the captain in his third match. At the age of 14, he was called for state trials. His father, instead of letting Axar, who wanted to quit cricket, quit, inspired him to keep pursuing the sport.

About a year later, during an away match against Gandhinagar, he received a call from a friend at 12 AM; his grandmother had passed away due to a heart attack. But his father did not inform him. The team manager did not allow him to leave the game and go home. He couldn’t sleep for two nights.

When he reached home two days later, his father hugged him and said, “I didn’t tell you so as not to distract you during the game.” An aspiration his father shared that night changed Axar’s life. “From that day on, I became serious,” he says, “I promised to play at least one match for India.”

He debuted in One Day Internationals for India during the tour of Bangladesh on June 15, 2014. On the day of the selection meeting, he was preparing to play the IPL Qualifier against KKR at Eden Gardens. “Cheteshwar Pujara came and congratulated me,” he recalls, “Then when I called my father, I heard him cry for the second time.”

After Kings XI Punjab reached the final that season, he received a grand welcome in Nadiad. He was paraded around the city in a Thar jeep. “Everything changed after that,” he says.

He considers MS Dhoni his idol. The advice Dhoni gave him as India’s mentor during the 2021 T20 World Cup—to play freely without taking pressure—proved decisive for Axar. After being sidelined due to a finger injury in the 2018 Asia Cup, he made a strong comeback in 2021. After taking 27 wickets in 3 matches in the Test series against England, he became the first choice across all formats.

His importance was further highlighted by his performance in the 2024 T20 World Cup matches against Pakistan, the semi-final, and the final. Scoring 47 runs off 31 balls coming in at number five in the final became one of the special innings of his career.

Axar, who is now 32, is one of India’s main all-rounders across all formats. In the upcoming T20 World Cup, he will be the vice-captain to Suryakumar Yadav. Regarding his long-term goals, he says, “If the opportunity arises and my heart agrees, I will certainly do it.”