HARROW'S Ravi Patel is a young man in a hurry to make up for lost time at Middlesex.
The 21-year-old left-arm spinner has firmly established himself in the first team squad this month after missing most of the first half of the campaign through injury.
The former Harrow St Mary’s colt, thought to put more revolutions on a ball than any spinner in the country bar Graham Swann and Monty Panesar looked set to star this season after finishing the last campaign in a blaze of publicity with a sack full of wickets in the last game against Lancashire.
And that promise was confirmed by a fifer in April against Cambridge University.
However, in the wake of that performance at Fenners, further scans on a troublesome scaphoid injury revealed he had been playing with a wrist fracture and surgery followed, leaving the youngster twiddling his spinning fingers.
He admits it was the most frustrating time of his career so far.
He said: “It was very frustrating for me and hard to get my head around.
"It was all quite sudden really because I had been playing with the injury during pre-season as I was still able to bowl with it being on my right wrist. It was a scaphoid injury and you can play through it, but the problem I had was when I was batting I could not really play my shots.
“When I was about 15 I had a stress fracture so missed quite a bit of cricket, but this was the first time since.
“It affected me because I was disappointed but I just looked at it that when I got back fit I wanted to be ready to step into any situation."
Step in he has, showing he is no mug with the bat with two plucky innings in the County Championship defeat to leaders Warwickshire last week.
But it is his spinning fingers which have really done the talking with Patel becoming a fixture in Middlesex’s best T20 campaign since they won the competition in 2008, his four wickets against arch rivals Surrey earlier this month confirmed a return to form and fitness.
Earlier this week he bowled four tight overs to help restrict Sussex Sharks to 148-7 in their 20 overs, though Gareth Berg stole the bowling headlines with 3-19.
Paul Stirling hit a six and five four in a whirlwind 26 before Joe Denly (53) and Dawid Malan (41) shared a stand of 80 for the second wicket.
After both fell in quick succession Middlesex made a meal of getting over the line, but Adam Voges struck the winning boundary with two balls to spare to seal a six-wicket victory and send the Panthers – temporarily at least - to the top of the South Group.
