New Zealand in India, 2021 (3 T20Is, 2 Tests)

[prasen9]

216 ahead at tea. Need another 50-60 runs to be safe. Hope Axar and Saha can pull it through. Iyer batted beautifully. Hopefully that means the end of Pujara or Rahane (or Mayank with Pujara opening). I would drop Rahane too and play SAY at his ground unless we want to play six bats, which may not be a bad idea. Two pacers on these wickets are redundant.

[ssp]

Pleased to be proven wrong by Saha. Way better than expected after slipping to 62/5. Bonus wicket at the end too.

Pitch looks very slow, so I hope we can get the win

[prasen9]

Me too about needing six batsmen. Maybe five bowlers keeps our bowlers fresher. Hope we can pull through.

Wrt Saha, I like his grit. Pant obviously is the best batsman-keeper we have ever had. Dhoni is a close second. (In tests). Then a big gap. Then, Kunderan, Parthiv, and Engineer are slightly ahead of Saha. Karthik could not score as much while keeping.

Interestingly, Parthiv is a year younger than Saha but got chances earlier because of his better batting. As did Karthik. In their generation, we had Dhoni (40), Ratra (39), Naman Ojha (38), Saha (37), Parthiv, Karthik (36) as our test keepers. Dhoni played the most followed by Saha (as wicketkeeper). Karthik played a few as a specialist bat too. At the end, Saha's 38 tests isn't bad. In the Engineer, More, Mongia range ... almost, around 40 tests. Of course, Dhoni and Kirmani played almost 90 tests. Dhoni and Saha being from the East Zone were called up a bit later than their counterparts as used to be wont with Indian cricket.

Interestingly, from these 36 year olds, we go directly to Pant, who is 24. We will see if Bharat, who is 28 or so gets a test. Or for that matter anyone. Or whether Pant blocks out everyone in that decade. Or more accurately, yug.

[Kumar]

Is Veerendra the worst intl umpire? He was mediocre during IPl and even worse here.

I think Ashwin is as good as some of our top order batsman. He seems to have very good technique. He looks way more comfortable at the crease than Jadeja. There is one big difference between Ashwin and Jadeja. Ashwin invariably gets out to nothing delivery, as a result he does not have the sustained success that Jadeja has in test cricket.

Coming to our top order batting woes, I agree with Athitee. We don’t have decent middle order options.

In the last 12 months, if we exclude Shreyas Iyer performance from this game, top 5 players with batting averages Sundar, Rohit, Pant, KL and Thakur are all out of this team.

Next best average is Gill at 31 and Kohli at 30.88 and Pujara at 28.0. I would wait till SA series before dropping one of two, probably Rahane. Rahane definitely needs to go back to domestic and come back.

As I said before, my prediction Pujara will open in place of Mayank.

As to the test match, I think pitch is very slow. Ashwin, Iyer and Saha looked very comfortable out there. Will have to see if Indian spinners are going to better than NZ. The performance of NZ seamers have Ben lights out this match. As prasen pointed out earlier, India probably loose by innings with Wagner in this team.

[Kumar]

Me too about needing six batsmen. Maybe five bowlers keeps our bowlers fresher. Hope we can pull through.

Wrt Saha, I like his grit. Pant obviously is the best batsman-keeper we have ever had. Dhoni is a close second. (In tests). Then a big gap. Then, Kunderan, Parthiv, and Engineer are slightly ahead of Saha. Karthik could not score as much while keeping.

Whimsical nature of the erstwhile Indian selectors. I have not watched Kunderan play, but to score 500 runs in a test series and he get dropped for the next series.. wow .. his replacement DS Indrajitsingh just scored 51 runs in 4 test matches.

If I remember correctly, venkatraghavan was a captain for one match when Pataudi was injured and he was dropped for the very next game. Could Rahane follow in the illustrious steps of Venkataraghavan

https://www.dreamcricket.com/articles/v ... o-be-told/

But it wasn’t just his place in the team. Venkatraghavan was easily the best captain of the lot, Wadekar included (after the Pataudi era). He had a sharp, cricketing mind, was tactically better aware than most, and in the ideal world would have been a long-term Indian captain. He led in the first Two World Cup, when India didn’t think much of the one-day game, and earlier in a famous Test against the West Indies when Pataudi was injured.

This, after half the team turned up at the venue on the morning of the match hoping to lead! In the end, Chandra had to be dropped to make way for Venkatraghavan, and when Pataudi returned to lead in the next Test, Venkat was demoted from captain to 12th man. That he did not complain, but bore the change with professional grace speaks of a player who was rather more than the sum of his statistics.

[Sin Hombre]

These home umpires are being diabolical and will help us cheat to a win here.

I don't mind dishing that to the Poms or the Aussies but the Kiwis deserve better.

[PKBasu]

There were some bad decisions made by the umpires against the Indian batsmen too. But the home umpires have generally done poorly in this series -- being shown up too often by the DRS.

Nonetheless, it was a fabulous day of cricket by India -- with a magnificent rearguard action by Shreyas Iyer (who surely has cemented his place in the middle-order for years to come), Ashwin (who played with supreme confidence, outscoring Shreyas handsomely in their partnership), Wriddhiman (who was gritty as always, but also really effective today against both pace and spin in perhaps his farewell test innings), and Axar (who followed his superb bowling with a solid, immaculate batting performance today). Frankly, I would have preferred to bat on until the first 15 minutes tomorrow -- in order to use the heavy roller tomorrow morning, and open up some more cracks in the pitch.
The wicket at the fag end of the 4th day (which DRS would have overruled had NZ reviewed it on time) fortuitously helped India's cause, justifying Rahane's decision to declare somewhat prematurely, at a time when India's 8th wicket stand was totally dominating the NZ attack.

[Kumar]

There were some bad decisions made by the umpires against the Indian batsmen too. But the home umpires have generally done poorly in this series -- being shown up too often by the DRS.
Frankly, I would have preferred to bat on until the first 15 minutes tomorrow -- in order to use the heavy roller tomorrow morning, and open up some more cracks in the pitch.

Nitin Menon had a great England series surprised to see his decisions getting overturned.. Why could we not use one umpire from The away country?

Aah I had been wondering earlier today when roller is used and what decisions are made. This article seems to take a different opinion for heavy rollers.

https://www.crictracker.com/how-heavy-a ... t-cricket/

[Atithee]

New Zealand can win this game easily. Not sure why it’s not even being considered possible.

[ssp]

Agree.100 runs per session is definitely possible, especially if their No 10 can bat out a session. What a sharp contrast to our top order. Our batting on the morning of day 2 was awful. The morning session of day 4 was even worse (51/5 at one point).

Can't see us taking 9 wickets in the time remaining. I'd take a draw from here.

[PKBasu]

Disastrous morning for the Indian bowlers. Not one wicket, as the 37 year old nightwatchman remained unbeaten. A loss is now a distinct possibility. Reinforces my view that it was a mistake to declare, and not have the opportunity to use the heavy roller this morning.

[PKBasu]

Poor session for NZ, and a good one for the Indian bowlers, as India picked 3 wickets between lunch and tea while conceding only 46 runs. A wicket each for Umesh, Ashwin (his 418th, taking him past Harbhajan's tally to place him 3rd in the all-time India list) and Jadeja. Ishant is useless, and should never be picked ahead of Siraj. (I know we've said this before and had to retract, but he is more useful in overseas conditions; why play him in home tests?).

With 159 runs needed in the final session, NZ aren't pressing for victory -- they prefer to play out a draw. It will be tough for India to pull off a victory with 6 wickets still to take.

[PKBasu]

Jadeja gets Williamson with a beauty (a well-disguised arm ball), after Axar got Nicholls a little earlier. 128/6, and an Indian victory comes squarely back into view.

[prasen9]

At the end, we declared a bit too late. On Day 4, Akash Chopra and Irfan wanted 1 hour of bowling to the Kiwis. Why did we not hit out the last 5-10 overs of our innings? Declaring too late has happened too often with captains all over the globe. Australia perhaps has some common sense in that they do not want to convert 10 wins to draws to avoid 1-2 defeats. It is a game of probabilities. Bad captaincy by Rahane.

[ssp]

Totally agree with Prasen.

Another 10 overs would have been handy. However, the lack of urgency in the field is really frustrating. Dawdling around between overs wastes so much time. I'm not India is worse than other teams, but with a win on the line, why not squeeze in 3-4 more overs in a day? Especially as bad light was always going to knock off 4-5 overs at the end of the day.

A few bad periods cost us the win. Awful batting on days 2 & 4. Not hitting out at the end of our 2nd innings and not declaring a little bit earlier. Worst of all was the lack of wickets on day 2 and in today's morning session.

Carrying duds like Ishant, Rahane & Pujara doesn't help. Maddeningly, we just keep selecting these guys. Mayank & Gill were poor too.