The first test between India and New Zealand has lived up to its expectation and from ball one. New Zealand started strongly with Kyle Jamieson swinging the ball and troubling the batsmen. New Zealand got Mayank Agarwal out early but then C Pujara and Gill started holding the fort together before the former was dismissed on 26 by Tim Southee. Shubhman played a fine knock of 52 runs before he was dismissed by Jamieson. After a couple of quick wickets, New Zealand had India in a spot of bother at 145/4.
That’s when debutant Shreyas Iyer and Sir Ravindra Jadeja started to build a partnership. They were stylish, they were flamboyant and they were disciplined too. They gave respect to the good balls and pounced heavily on the bad balls and stitched together a 100 run partnership which brought India back to the game. Sir Jadeja was then dismissed for 50 by Tim Southee but by then he had helped steer India’s ship into safe waters.
Shreyas Iyer showed that he has been ready for test cricket for a long while now with such mature innings on his debut. He was at the top of his game and was toying around with the bowlers when he wanted. He went on to score a century on test debut and made it to the record books in his first game itself. He was on 105 when he was dismissed by Tim Southee. He played a blinder of a knock with 13 fours and 2 sixes in his 105 runs.
After Iyer’s dismissal, Southee was in the mood for rampage and he did his best to wrap-up India’s innings as early as he could. 38 from 56 balls from R Ashwin and 10 runs off 34 balls from Umesh Yadav helped India post a total of 345-10 after 111.1 overs.
The pitch has something in it for the seekers and that is for sure. Out of the 10 wickets India lost, 8 were to the seamers. New Zealand spinners could not gather too much help from the wicket. So with India playing three spinners, are they at a disadvantage?
Well, this is India and we certainly think even if there is not much help available at the moment for the spinners in the first innings, but as we start going into day 4 or day 5, the cracks will open up a bit and the spinners will eventually come into play.
So at the moment it seems nicely squared up and it will be interesting to see how New Zealand go on from here. If they can somehow manage a good first innings total and maybe manage a lead of even 50-100 runs, it sets up the game perfectly and promises to be one hell of a test match.
So don’t miss out on the action and keep watching this space for more.
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