When Anil Kumble took all ten wickets in an innings in the Delhi Test against Pakistan in 1999, Ajaz Patel was ten years old. That may or may not have been propitious, but on a day the New Zealand left-arm spinner became the first man since Kumble to achieve the magical mark, it was hard not to look at such happy statistical quirks.
Bowlers have taken eight wickets in a Test innings on 12 occasions in India, and four of them have belonged to visitors. Nine-fors have been taken only thrice, and none of them have come from visiting bowlers. India is not an easy place for an overseas bowler, and that includes spinners, who have to contend with some of the finest batters adept at smothering their art.
For Ajaz then to take only the third ten-for ever in the history of Test cricket — after Kumble and England’s Jim Laker in 1956 – against the country of his birth in the city of his birth has to belong to the rarest of rare category of sporting feats.
