A soft spoken wiry 21-year old Axar Patel has emerged as a vital cog in the Kings XI Punjab lineup. In their penultimate match of Pepsi IPL 2015, the left-arm spinner starred in the team’s morale boosting win over Royal Challengers Bangalore in Mohali. Axar, who finished with figures of two for 11 in the rain-reduced ten overs-a-side match, picked the prized wicket of AB de Villiers and later sent back Mandeep Singh to help KXIP end their losing streak. Besides expressing his happiness at the 22-run win, Axar revealed his plans for the explosive de Villiers, whose wicket helped tip the match in the host’s favour. The youngster, who has so far claimed 13 wickets from as many matches, in addition to contributing 174 runs with bat, feels that his performances in the tournament will keep him in the fray for the national team with the ICC World T20 looming in the horizon. Excerpts: Although your team has no chance of qualifying for playoffs, how much happiness does the win bring? Given the way we were losing, to get this win definitely brings lot of happiness to all of us. Everyone got an opportunity, but no one was able to turn things around. We were not clicking as a team and we lost a few close games. The kind of commitment that everyone is showing even though we can’t now qualify for the playoffs is the important thing for us. After the kind of start that Wriddhiman Saha had given, do you think you could have finished with a few more runs? Yes, we should have scored 5-10 runs more. But we didn’t score as many in the last two-three overs as we were losing wickets. But the ball wasn’t coming on to the bat; the ball was stopping on the pitch (and playing strokes became difficult). How difficult is to plan for AB de Villiers and what was your strategy? He plays all around the ground. So to plan for him is easy for a spinner; one shouldn’t bowl quick to him because he uses the pace of the ball. He goes on to play a lot of innovative shots. So my plan was I should bowl to him on his stumps. Today too I bowled at his stumps so I could get him out. What was the team’s plan coming out to defend the total? Our plan was to play the match like we would play any other T20 game. We always knew that the batsmen are going to hit, but we were looking to use the swing in the first two-three overs and then after that we would bowl according to the situation of the match. Would you say that it was a bowlers’ day today? Yes, it seems that way after how the batsmen performed, the way we could bowl our team to a win by restricting RCB. We not only restricted the runs but at the same time picked wickets too. That felt good. What were your plans while bowling to Mandeep Singh and Sarfaraz Khan. Both players have reputations of being boundary-hitters? It worked for me that they were both new to the crease. I have played against them quite a bit so I knew their weaknesses, which is that they mostly try to hit over the covers and over midwicket. So I wasn’t giving them width; I was bowling on their pads or bowling a fuller length. So it wasn’t easy for them to hit me. Although your team hasn’t performed too well, you have personally had a decent IPL season. How to do you look back on your performance? Yes, the team didn’t perform well and that’s a disappointment. But I was doing my bit when I got the opportunity. And I believe that if I perform it will help the team, and today that I could help the team win makes me happy. I also think that if I am able to perform, with the tour to Bangladesh coming up, I can stake claim for a place in the national team. I have made my India debut but I can’t just sit on that. I would like to continue being part of the team. So the IPL is important to me from that point of view as well. And then, the World T20 will also be played here (next year), so in that sense too, performing well in the IPL is important.