Australia in their prime could not win a test series in India. New Zealand won 3-0 against arguably the best bowling attack. It made no sense. Glenn Philips was their second spinner. Shami’s absence might have provided that small let-up for NZ to score those extra runs before conditions evened out for both teams. The conditions progressively worsened in every test and lower-order rearguard never happened. Rachin Ravindra would be their next superstar if he is not already
Test 1: Even though India lost, it felt like a win. India almost shut NZ out of the game after conceding a lead of 350. KL and Pant took the shine off the second new ball. Pant swept a ball out of the stadium. The replacement ball bounced and moved relatively more. India lost 7 for 50-odd runs.
Test 2: This is the test where India was never in the game. Mitchel Santner happened. The irony is, likely he might not take 5 wickets in a test again.
Test 3: NZ won an important toss. Jaiswal played spin well and India scored 80 for 1. 8 balls of madness happened. Murphy’s law?
New Zealand had the skill to utilize the conditions on offer. They basically repeated thrice what India did in Gabba to Australia, that’s how significant their achievement is.
The expected outcome based on India’s bowling attack (with no Shami and Nitish as 4th seamer) is to lose 5-0 to Australia. The stage is set for a Gabba repeat 😊
Some good reads that reported actual cricket.
Source: https://open.substack.com/pub/cricketingview/p/india-swept-away-by-patel?r=o2ats&utm_medium=ios
India lost 60 wickets in 410 false shots in this series (or one dismissal every 6.8 false shots). New Zealand survived 543 false shots for their 52 wickets (or one dismissal every 10.5 false shots). If only the respective top sevens are considered, then New Zealand’ survived 12.3 false shots per dismissal, while India survived 7.7 false shots per dismissal. Far too many Indian bats fell to early false shots compared to New Zealand.
Hawk-Eye data in this piece by Kartikeya Date shows that the Mumbai pitch took three hours before offering big turn to India’s spinners. Those three hours are worth 100 runs in relatively easy conditions. For a long time, India had batters to overcome this disadvantage if they lost the toss; now they don’t seem to do so.