Haren
India didn’t really lose the game when they were all out for 46 on Day 2 of this rain-impacted Test. This is a team capable of bouncing back. The reason for the defeat isn’t even the bowlers who couldn’t run through the New Zealand side on the final day. The tide turned in New Zealand favour on the fourth day. And that went a long way in the visitors winning the first Test by eight wickets.
Freeze frame on the moment when Sarfaraz Khan had reached his 150, and Rishabh Pant was on 89. It was the time India was leading by 52 runs with seven wickets in hand. It’s where the Test match slipped away from India and now solely depends on minor-miracle from their bowlers – – or the weather.
WTC Points Table after 1st Test
That’s the beauty of Test matches; you can seize multiple sessions as dramatically and as imperiously as Indians did to rise from the dead, so to speak, but the real mettle comes when the needle swings back to balance. Or in white-ball terms, you can revive from a lost position, but once you get ahead in the chase and the potential for victory looms, what do you do? In the 90’s batsmen not named Michael Bevan would freeze. In the 2010’s, batsmen not named MS Dhoni would freeze. But Test matches are a different breed, as even those two hallowed white-ball players found out during their careers.
New Zealand did it the old way, hanging on, chipping in, waiting for the momentum to swing their way; rather for the right moment to make it happen. For them it was the second new ball and in the young William ORourke, they have a pacer in the mould of India’s bowling coach Morne Morkel, who can make things happen. He banged the ball into the pitch and had the Indians on the hop. New Zealand’ future star can insta-reel the wickets of Pant and KL Rahul with some pride.
Indian fans, if not the players themselves, were probably thinking too far ahead of a glorious finish: how India is going to set a big target and scuttle out New Zealand on the final day for a great win. You take your eyes off the present, and a bad version of the future gatecrashes. In a blink, the lower order was shot out and suddenly the Indian dream was in tatters.
