WELLINGTON: Cricket can surprise you in more ways than one and the nail-biting, low-scoring thriller at the Hnry Stadium on Saturday was a classic example. A week or so ago, in the third T20I, Abhishek Sharma (113) scored more in a run-feast than the rest of the team combined. In the second ODI of the five-match series, India produced 113 runs in a rain-curtailed contest. The difference between the two 113s was that Abhishek fired his off just 38 balls while India struggled against some hostile bowling from Kyle Jamieson & Co.The weather played its tricks and spiced the drop-in surface but the real difference was the intensity with which the hosts hit during the modest run-defence. At the half-way mark, it seemed like a comfortable 135-run chase but one bouncer at a time, the hosts turned it into a proper contest between bat and ball.India played some loose shots, exposing many batters’ techniques against sustained fire from both ends.Shubman Gill departed early, Virat Kohli played a loose shot, Rohit Sharma battled but again played a rash shot and then came the final blow when Axar Patel, coming in at No. 5, kept searching for the way out.
The Axar call
The match was delicately placed when Rohit was dismissed in the ninth over but the management persisted with Axar rather than sending in a specialist batter like KL Rahul. India have maintained that Axar will be their preferred option to break the right-hander monotony in the batting line-up but sending him ahead of Rahul on a testing pitch was where India missed a trick, raising questions about whether the left-hander is the right choice for that number.The move worked on slow and turning pitches during the Champions Trophy in Dubai and will help when the spinners bowl in tandem, but it felt like a stretch during the second ODI. Axar was peppered with short stuff and he only looked to cut his way out of trouble. He perished playing a similar shot in the series opener, and a similar intention brought curtains down on his struggle in the middle.Even as wickets tumbled and pressure mounted, Rahul rode the bounce, controlled his pulls and looked at ease while others across both teams looked clueless. Briefly, Shreyas Iyer fought fire with fire but another well-directed short delivery resulted in the Indian vice-captain’s wicket.
India’s KL Rahul bats during Game 2 of the one day international cricket between New Zealand and India, in Wellington, New Zealand. AP/PTI
It was a similar story in the first innings when Gurnoor Brar and Co. dished out similar treatment to New Zealand and the hosts also looked all at sea in testing conditions.The two innings did make the last international fixture feel like an anomaly. 397 runs were scored in 33.2 overs during that sixathon on October 27 and Iyer’s words at the post-match interaction make so much sense after witnessing what we saw today.“When Sanju and I, we went to bat, the ball was seaming, and I was like, how did they manage this? It was simply mind-boggling,” Iyer said when he was asked about India’s assault.The visitors managed 100 runs in five overs and the pair of Abhishek and Vaibhav Sooryavanshi made the New Zealand attack, featuring three bowlers from the ODI line-up, look pedestrian. Mind-boggling indeed!Yes, the weather helped but it also underlines how special Abhishek’s 113 was compared to India’s poor labour to 113 today.
