India won the third ODI too to take a 2-0 lead in the ODI series. The Indian batsmen fired again and in the end the margin of victory came out to be a pretty decent – 58 runs.
NZ gave India a good scare towards the beginning and end of run chase. The start they got from McCullum and Ryder had made the chase look achievable before they had a couple of run outs. Towards the end, Mills & Southee again created a scare as they kept up with the asking rate for quite some time. The drama in Patel’s over and Pathan coming over to complete Patel’s over resulted in the breakthrough India was looking for.
The first ball which was no-balled in that over led to heart burn for Indian fielders and expectedly so. It was no-balled after it was caught and batsman had refused to go. If it was a no-ball, umpires should have signalled it immediately and not waited for batsmen to “appeal” against it. Had NZ went on to win the match, there would have been a lot of hue and cry over this and Indians would have felt cheated.
In the first half, Indian batsmen dominated NZ after a slightly sluggish start and India made highest total scored in NZ by any team. Nearly every batsman joined the party and hit big shots at the expense of NZ bowlers. Sadly, Tendulkar was forced to retire hurt and he could not take a shot at 200 in this form of cricket.
Among the Indian batsmen, nearly all of them had at least one good score in NZ so far except Gambhir. He has not yet fired in any of the games so far and it will be critical for India’s success in Test matches for him to have some confidence and form before we start test series.
NZ tried well yesterday and the total was always going to be too large to chase and the best they can get from this series is a draw. So far, India has dominated them and it looks unlikely that this is going to change now.
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