India wins their first series in New Zealand

It was a great performance by the Indian team to win the one day series in New Zealand for the first time. Yesterday’s match again was rain affected and the way Sehwag and Ghambir kept India way ahead of the Duckworth-Lewis (DL) calculation was absolutely brilliant. The Indian bowling though was patchy. The start was good but they did not keep up the tempo letting Mccullum and Ryder to get off to a flier. Yuvraj and Yusuf Pathan were brought into the attack and they were successful in putting the brakes on the Kiwi openers.

The Indian fielding again was not up to the mark. There were lots of misfields and missed chances along the way during the New Zealand innings. Brendon Mccullum was given two reprieves during his innings of 77 and Dhoni’s miss stumping was the worst of the two. India’s bowling at the death was also not that spectacular as they were carted around easily by Andrew Mcglashan and Grant Elliot. After the rain interrupted first innings New Zealand reached a competitive 270/5 in 47 overs which was bumped up to 281 for the Indians to chase by the DL. Ishant Sharma was rusty on his return to the side and was inconsistent. Even though he picked up two wickets he was really shabby with no balls and got hit around a little bit.

Hopefully he will get his act together before the important test series to start in a week’s time.
So India started their innings needing almost 6 an over which is kind of tough in a game with so many rain interruptions. Well it’s not something which troubled the Indian openers though as they took the kiwi bowlers to the cleaners. Nothing worked for the New Zealand captain last night as the Indians rattled along at over 7 runs per over. All the bowlers were treated with equal contempt by the Indian openers. Sehwag blasted his way to a brilliant one day hundred of just 60 deliveries which is an Indian record. It was a display of calculated hitting and it came of brilliantly for the Indian opener. Sehwag finished on 125 unbeaten when the rain interrupted play for one final time. The Indians were racing along in the pursuit of 220 of 36 overs as they were 201/0 in just 23.3 overs.

The Kiwis will be really disappointed in losing the series 3-0 as this is the first time they have lost to the Indians at home. Dhoni and his team though would be enjoying this moment as it adds yet another brilliant win to their resume. The Indians though would want to finish the series 4-0 and get as much confidence as possible for the test series. They would have been bolstered by the news of Rahul Dravid scoring a fantastic hundred in the New Zealand domestic game. All in all a great performance from the Indian team after losing the first two Twenty20 games. Hope they carry this confidence to the test series too.