Ajaz Patel basks in the applause as he walks off the field following his 10 wickets. Photo / Photosport
47.5-12-119-10.
Welcome to cricket immortality, Ajaz Patel.
In just his 11th test, Patel became the third bowler to take 10 wickets in a test innings, joining Jim Laker and Anil Kumble, and he was the first to do so away from home.
Patel also remarkably managed to accomplish the feat on days one and two of the test match, where conditions are usually least favourable for spin bowlers.
Here are 10 reasons Patel managed to pull off the perfect 10.
Let's start with the obvious. Patel is far and away the best test spinner New Zealand have produced since Daniel Vettori.
Of the 33 New Zealand spinners to have taken more than five test wickets, Patel is the only one with an average under 34, sitting with 39 wickets at 28.1, while striking every 61 balls on average.
Compare that to recent incumbents – Mitchell Santner (41 wickets at 45.6, SR 98), Ish Sodhi (41 wickets at 48.6, SR 78), Mark Craig (50 wickets at 46.5, SR 73) and Jeetan Patel (65 wickets at 47.3, SR 90) – and the improved threat Patel provides has been a huge boon to New Zealand's ability to be competitive in the sub-continent, earning away victories over Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and drawing with India.
It's not just skill though, as Patel's success has also come down to…
Here's a (not so?) fun fact – Patel has never taken a test wicket in New Zealand, failing to strike in 49 overs on largely green, seam-friendly wickets.
That will likely change when he plays on the (comparatively) spin-friendly Mount Maunganui wicket against Bangladesh on January 1, but Patel has been at his best when playing on tracks that assist the tweakers, and few are more spin-friendly than Mumbai.
If Patel's 10 wickets weren't enough to display the turn and bounce on show, the Indian spinners hammered the point home by ripping through a hapless New Zealand batting display.
After playing on a Kanpur track that was low, slow, and offered little turn, a move to Mumbai gave Patel much more beneficial conditions, and he took advantage to – literally – the fullest extent.
When Patel bowled in Kanpur, he was rusty at first – to be expected from someone who hadn't played a red ball game since June.
After shining in Bangladesh in five Twenty20s in September, Patel went home to Auckland, where he was locked down and unable to play Plunket Shield games for his Central Districts province.
So, showing up in Kanpur with no cricket under his belt and no warm-up games to get used to conditions, Patel struggled initially, with loose bowling resulting in far more expensive returns than expected.
He improved as the test progressed, and was clearly far better for the experience when he stepped off the plane in Mumbai.
It's possibly superfluous to state, given his final figures, but Patel had the ball on a string for the majority of the innings.
At one stage he had a spell of 8-7-2-3, and while he makes it sound easy - "it was just about finding some good rhythm and just being repetitive and asking good questions of the batters" - Patel's accuracy led to some unplayable deliveries, with one being so accurate that Ravichandran Ashwin couldn't believe he had been bowled, initially asking for a review.
The only player to have success against Patel was Mayank Agarwal, and after day one he explained his strategy to attack Patel and try to put him off his rhythm.
"He is somebody who bowled really well, really consistent. He had that phase when he really tied us down," Agarwal said.
"He kept bowling in a cluster and he kept [applying] pressure. Anything that was in our half, the plan was to be a little attacking. Anything that came a little towards us in length, I was definitely looking to go."
But, while that worked to the tune of 150 brilliant runs, even Agarwal eventually came undone by Patel's accuracy, caught behind from a thin edge.
You've probably read the stories by now, but Patel was born in Mumbai and lived there until he was eight, and returns regularly to the city. While impossible to estimate how much his local knowledge helped, it had to have been of use.
If you're also a believer in the concept of "extra motivation" – I find it hard to believe Patel isn't 100 per cent motivated every time he wears the silver fern – then playing in front of some family members for the first time couldn't have hurt either.
While it is possible to take 10 wickets as a result of strong support bowling - for example, a player holding up an end and creating pressure - that wasn't exactly the case here.
When comparing Will Somerville's figures to that of Patel and the three Indian spinners, the stats match what the eyes showed – Somerville was woeful. His wayward 19 overs for 80 wicketless runs meant there was no other threat to take advantage of the turning track, while the Kiwi seamers were a far cry from their stunning returns in Kanpur.
Tim Southee (22-6-43-0) was tidy but rarely threatening, while Kyle Jamieson's breakneck start to his test career finally hit a rough patch, with his 12 overs failing to provide cut-through, and conceding 36 runs.
The Black Caps bowling unit was also hampered by…
With Somerville unhelpful, the Black Caps could have turned to Rachin Ravindra, but their third and only other spin option caught a bug before the test, and after battling through four overs for 20 runs on day one, was used as a specialist fielder for the remainder of India's first innings.
He took the final two catches to give his good friend his ninth and tenth wickets, but with the benefit of glorious hindsight, the selectors missed a trick by not playing either Neil Wagner, Mitchell Santner or even Glenn Phillips.
This may be obvious after rattling off the list of struggles from Patel's bowling comrades, but credit to Tom Latham for continually feeding the hot hand and not relenting pressure by allowing the Indian batsmen long looks at the lesser-performing bowlers.
Of New Zealand's 109.5 overs in the field, 47.5 of them were bowled by Patel – the most by a New Zealand bowler since Sodhi bowled 49 overs against the West Indies in a test which started exactly eight years before the Mumbai test.
Sodhi's returns were far less flattering, taking 2-155, and while he may not have had any other choices, Latham didn't screw up the quest for a perfect 10. And, when a writer is struggling to fill out a "10 reasons" list, that's good enough for inclusion. Thank you Tom.
For a few minutes it looked as if Patel might have butchered a chance for 10 scalps. He had taken seven when he made a half-hearted appeal – more like a polite enquiry, really – for lbw on Jayant Yadav. Nobody was particularly interested, including the umpire, but a replay showed the ball had hit pad first, instead of bat like everyone suspected, and Yadav should have been out.
Patel remedied that issue by removing Yadav later for his ninth wicket, and he had a helping hand by the Decision Review System in snaring his eighth, with Axar Patel initially given not out when shouldering arms outside off stump, only for a review to show the ball would have turned back and knocked over off stump.
That eighth wicket led to…
Patel picked up his final two victims in one over, with Yadav trying to smash him for six but holing out to long-off, and three balls later Mohammed Siraj also went down swinging, with a top edge towering towards Ravindra at mid-on where he took the catch for number 10.
Had those catches been put down, or fallen short of fielders, then those two batsmen would have likely been just as reckless to whoever the next bowler was, and perhaps a chance at history would have ended with a damp squib and an undeserved cheap wicket.
Instead, we ended with the perfect 10.
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