ICC World T20: 5 Turning points from India’s horror show vs New Zealand
Firstly, please excuse the pun in the headline. In the context of things, it is a moment of dejection for India fans. A few points to mull over after India lost by 47 runs in the ICC World T20 opener in Nagpur.
New Zealand’s 3 spinners vs India’s 2 spinners
In terms of out-and-out spin options, New Zealand went in with three spinners (Nathan McCullum, Mitchell Santner and Ish Sodhi) and India fielded two (Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja). How rarely do you see a team playing more spinners than India when playing in India? And such a wise decision in the end. Like India, New Zealand started their bowling work with a spinner. And like India, the first over produced a wicket. In all, Kiwi spinners took an oustanding nine wickets (Adam Milne took the final Ashish Nehra wicket). Before all that, the credit should go to Kane Williamson for having the gall to tell Tim Southee and Trent Boult to sit out. In came the inexperienced Santner and Sodhi and they took the game by storm. New Zealand’s spin figures at the end read: 11-0-44-9.
Oh my the spin!
The buzz words over the past year or more have been ‘rank turner’ when talking about Indian pitches. And looks like India were tangled by the own web that it weaved. With the team management asking for spin friendly tracks during South Africa’s tour here, the ball spun ferociously from Day 1. ICC match referee had termed this very pitch as ‘poor’ but India didn’t pay heed to it and look where it got them. Over the past few months, India have played on batsmen friendly pitches in Australia, green tinge in the sub-continent and come out fairly unscathed. But in Jamtha, the luck ran out. If the same trick is deployed at Eden Gardens, which looks very unlikely, against Pakistan – there will be mayhem.
Dhoni deploys pace at the death
With the ball clearly spinning violently and an erratic bounce to help it, using spin at the death may have been a wise decision. But Dhoni opted to use pace attack at the end. Of the six overs at the end, four were bowled by pacers and two by Jadeja. Ashwin’s quota of four overs was done by the end of 10 overs. One could argue that it was strategic to keep the Kiwi batsmen unsettled. But on the other side, one could also argue that Dhoni failed to read the track properly right at the beginning. Should he have gone with three spinners one wonders with the luxury of hindsight?
Raging spin meets piss poor shots
The batsmen had already seen the ball was spinning a lot. The likes of Suresh Raina were able to get the ball to grip and bounce to give a fair reflection of how daunting this wicket was going to be. And they got first hand experience when chasing. But despite this anomaly, and the need of the hour to be clever and patient, the batsmen played miserable shots to literally hand their wickets. The pitch played a role in aiding this, yes, but doesn’t discount the technical flaws at display. Rohit Sharma’s dance down the track despite tricky conditions and conceding his wicket was first sign of caution. Raina’s dolly to Guptill while trying to close the face of the bat and Yuvraj Singh’s return catch to Nathan McCullum were more examples of India’s horror show with the bat.
Santner casts tricky spell
Going into the game, Santner was an unknown on the international scene. This mechanical engineering student had only 5 T20Is under his belt as he came into the tournament. But this lack of experience didn’t show. What showed was payback of faith shown by Brendon McCullum earlier and Williamson now. With each delivery, the left arm spinner was contributing to the notion that Indian batsmen don’t face spin well. Or not anymore at least. It started with Rohit Sharma’s stumping off the second delivery, Raina’s dismissal off the fifth, catching Hardik Pandya lbw off the tenth and removing India’s hopes with MS Dhoni’s wicket in his final over. He later acknowledged that he would prefer another wicket like this in Dharamsala and you wonder why wouldn’t he!
