Timid and indecisive Team India blown away by competitive and committed New Zealand as Kiwis eye Test history

Let’s pause for a moment and allow this to sink in. 259 and 198 for five vs 156 after day two of a Test match in India. Odds are that one would assume that the first set of scores will be against India’s name, the least of those three totals would have been stitched together by the opposition.

That’s precisely what is not the case in Pune. In the most Indian of conditions, New Zealand have comprehensively out-batted and out-bowled the hosts, which is why they are well placed to inflict a rare second successive Test defeat on India in their own turf.

As It Happened |  India vs New Zealand, 2nd Test in Pune, Day 2

Historically, there has been so much to admire about the way New Zealand go about their cricket. Their pool is vastly limited compared to India’s and they don’t have access to the same facilities that their Indian counterparts do. But even though they had won just two Tests previously in India, they had always given their hosts a run for their money because they have perennially been driven and competitive, committed and smart.

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Their eight-wicket win in Bengaluru last week was largely attributed to three hours of batting madness by India when play eventually got underway on the second morning. In overcast conditions and on a damp pitch, India were shot out for 46; when they responded with 462 in the second innings, it appeared as if normal service had been restored even though India ended up on the losing side.

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Maybe it’s time to revisit that theory. On a turner but not diabolically so, New Zealand have bossed the second Test so far. They are 301 runs to the good with five second-innings wickets standing, a result of their adaptability and their willingness and ability to tailor their game to the demands of the situation, both with bat and ball.

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Bowling accurate, sweep shots turn the tide for NZ

It can’t be denied that Tom Latham won a crucial toss on Thursday, but that didn’t guarantee anything. New Zealand needed to put runs on the board, and they did so with characteristic gumption, but also through a sound game plan. In Bengaluru on a good track, once the moisture went away, they used their feet superbly to India’s spinners. In Pune, they relied heavily on the sweep and the reverse sweep, which might be dismissed as the last resort of batters that aren’t sure how to play the turning ball, but which also has the opposite effect – of putting the spinners off their rhythm.

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Where New Zealand’s batting revolved around being aggressive when possible but working the large gaps that Rohit Sharma’s in-out fields provided them, India were pegged down by the Kiwis’ accuracy and their constant attacking of the stumps. Nineteen of the 25 wickets that have fallen so far have been either bowled or leg before, suggesting that the bounce is uneven-to-low and therefore it is imperative to ensure that most balls are hitting the stumps. New Zealand have done that more consistently than India with Mitchell Santner in the forefront, courtesy his seven-wicket haul, which is commendable because these are the conditions that India’s accomplished spinners are more accustomed to, where they have learnt and honed and polished their craft day after day, year after year, for more than a decade and a half now.

The pressure New Zealand applied on India’s batters on day two was relentless. They seldom veered from their plans, refusing to get carried away by the assistance. They had also closely observed R Ashwin and Washington Sundar, the two off-spinners who had taken all ten Kiwi wickets on Thursday, most closely. They gleaned lessons from how the duo went about their jobs, they began to drop their pace but not so frequently that they became predictable, and they used the help from the pitch as their ally rather than attempting to overreach and thereby selling themselves short.

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India’s counter-punching second-innings effort in Bengaluru was a warning New Zealand heeded admirably. They gave their opponents very little to work with, stifling them with accuracy and feeding off the batters’ indecisiveness when it came to rotating strike. Tied down for long periods, more than one batter perished in playing an ill-advised stroke. It was the classic choke, creating pressure through dot balls and constantly bowling at the same batter, preventing the strike from turning over and therefore inviting the stroke that was generally fraught with great risk.

Kiwi batters outlast Indian counterparts

The days of the hard graft are gradually disappearing from Test cricket. Gautam Gambhir spoke the other day of India possessing batters who can bat out two days, if required, but the most balls any batter negotiated on Friday was 72 (Shubman Gill). No one spent more than 107 minutes (Yashasvi Jaiswal) in the middle. In New Zealand’s second innings, Latham faced 133 deliveries in making 86, Tom Blundell’s unbeaten 30 has consumed 70 deliveries. Maybe India were more anxious in the second innings to compensate for a 103-run deficit and therefore over-attacked in their eagerness to pick up wickets, but credit to New Zealand for devising and then implementing methods – primarily muscular sweeps and resounding reverse sweeps – to ensure that they kept the scoreboard ticking over.

Morne Morkel, India’s bowling coach, pointed to New Zealand’s accuracy with the ball for India not being able to rotate strike more expertly in their first innings. The fact is, New Zealand played out 332 dot balls in their 79.1-over first innings batting stint, which is 30.1% of all balls faced. India’s dot-ball percentage was 29.7, though their innings only lasted 45.3 overs in which there were 192 unscored deliveries. Maybe New Zealand had the rub of the green at times, but that’s only to be expected. They have gone about making their own luck all series long, which is why fortune has favoured them. India, by contrast, have been a little timid and uncertain except for 80 breathtaking second-innings overs in Bengaluru. Those 80 overs fetched them 400 for three, but around that period, there have been batting collapses of 10 for 46, seven for 54 for and now nine for 106. Devastating, truly. And almost certainly decisive.