Day 4 at Nagpur
It ended swiftly. After having New Zealand on the ropes for three days, the number one side landed the knockout punch, and order was restored.
It's sad that we saved our worst batting display for last, but I think the players were mentally shot. Brendon McCullum's error of judgement early on followed by two unfortunate umpiring decisions against Guptill and Taylor (so where does India stand on the UDRS issue, finally?) pretty much saw to that. Unedifying sights of the day included poor Gareth Hopkins on nightwatchman duty, Raina claiming those two cheap wickets of Ryder and Vettori, and Southee belatedly showing the top order what could be done on this pitch with some positive intent.
Good as the batting was in the first two tests, it takes a certain amount of intensity and application to sustain those performances over a series. NZ are some way off yet. 193 batting first in these conditions...you don't get back from there.
This leaves a sour taste in the mouth after what has still been a good tour for NZ overall. At least the test side now has a settled look about it; when Pakistan visit next month, the batsmen should take some confidence going in to the series while the bowlers can finally get conditions more to their liking.
2 comments:
Looking ahead to the Pakistan series; in light of their form in Dubai it looks like it could be a deceptively close encounter. With the return of Younis, and the return to form of Misbah the only question marks are really over their bowling attack (which will enjoy NZ conditions).
A sad, but one feels inevitable, way to end the series. A few eyes on the one day series (or the plane home) one thinks. Ross Taylor's dismissal in particular was disappointing, if nothing else he should have been looking for some runs after such a disappointing series.
Yeah, disappointing from Taylor. Sreesanth has been all over him this tour and it got to a point where he had to hit his way out of trouble.
Pakistan will be more difficult this time, methinks. Their batting is a lot stronger. The bowling is a bit of an unknown quantity, but we all know what happens when rookie Pakistani fast bowlers turn out against NZ..
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