Will Young's ton, Matt Henry six-for sink India in fourth ODI

New Zealand dismiss India for 89 after setting a target of 334 in fourth ODI at Mount Maunganui.

From the highs of Auckland and Wellington, India have been pulled down to reality, and how. On a Mount Maunganui pitch where New Zealand seemed to breeze to 333, India were bundled out for a paltry 89, all in the span of 160 deliveries.

Matt Henry dismissed Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma and Shreyas Iyer in his opening over. (PTI)

The pitch didn’t dramatically turn on them, but Matt Henry sure rattled India with three wickets in the opening over before completing a commanding haul of 6/27 that inflicted on the visitors a colossal 244-run defeat to finally make the series look closer at 2-1.

Only Naman Dhir bristled with a 24-ball 21 in an otherwise sorry batting display. Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli and Shreyas Iyer failed to open their accounts before Ruturaj Gaikwad inched to five, making the top four of the Indian batting order resemble an international dialling code. Ishan Kishan and Axar Patel fought, but New Zealand’s bowling was so rampant that India never really stood a chance in the fourth ODI.

Only once in the past have Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli gotten a duck in the same one-day innings. The year was 2010, when Virender Sehwag was opening, MS Dhoni was leading, Sachin Tendulkar was still two years away from ODI retirement, and Rohit and Kohli still in the ascendancy. Exactly a year away from the ODI World Cup in South Africa, however, an encore of that—though purely incidental—has the potential to leave India’s dressing room with a vein of unease.

Even a string of average scores, irrespective of how one’s hitting the ball, goes a long way to maintain a batter’s psychological edge. Rohit’s last three outings now read 0, 23, 0. That all of them have come in New Zealand isn’t a big deal until his scores against West Indies at home—32, 101 and 92—are strung together in the same row. Between Guwahati and Mount Maunganui, the conditions have moved 180 degrees, with the ball moving remarkably off the seam and bouncing, something rarely seen in India. Watching Rohit fall to that—the ball kicked up from length to square him up and take a thick edge—raises the question of whether India need to play more such matches to be hardened enough for South Africa.

At least Kohli seemed to be above criticism. Till Matt Henry got the ball to shape in, stay a tad low and crash into Kohli’s stumps. It was a scintillating delivery, but Kohli too stayed inside its line instead of playing forward.

Same with Shreyas Iyer, who was probably expecting a bouncer but got a fuller delivery that struck him on his back pad. With feet nailed to the crease and the bat wafting away from the body, everything about that dismissal screamed poor technique. More dire was the circumstances left India in a more dire situation: 0 for three wickets after a brilliant first over from Henry. The rest of the batting order was made to gasp at a target before even getting a feel of the conditions.

Ishan Kishan tried batting Test style because he was running out of partners and also because he wasn’t able to middle the ball often. Till Henry returned to get the ball to seam back in from length, inducing a forward defence from Kishan but it got an inside edge to clip the top of his leg stump. The only other specialist batter was Ruturaj Gaikwad but his stay lasted just 13 deliveries, Kyle Jamieson removed him with a fifth stump delivery that he edged to Michael Bracewell at second slip.

New Zealand’s catching was expectedly brilliant, but it stood out even more on Friday because India’s was decidedly sub-par. Will Young reached a hundred, his highest ODI score showing good skills but also riding some luck. Young was scratching around on five when he was dropped off consecutive Auqib Nabi deliveries—Rohit first palmed him at first slip before Kishan grassed a catch behind the wickets. Something changed in him after that as Young started to meet the ball earlier. That, along with Tim Seifert's familiar charge meant New Zealand were scoring at over seven runs per over even after the first 10 overs had passed.

Which was quite creditable because at no point in time did the pitch look easy to bat on.

Electing to chase, India again overlooked Mohammed Siraj but Nabi was getting the ball to shape in, Gurnoor Brar was making batters hop, and Arshdeep was on the money as usual. Seifert though was playing his own game, trying to pull anything that was short, as he scored an attacking 58 off 48 balls to provide New Zealand with a feisty opening stand of 85. Nick Kelly and Dean Foxcroft didn’t last long but Finn Allen once again proved to be India’s nemesis, scoring a brisk 41 off 30 balls to lift New Zealand out of a brief gloom as they added 89 runs from overs 21 to 30.

India tried to claw back though, primarily through Axar Patel who returned 2/39 from his entire quota, but Young remained a constant threat, reaching his hundred in 88 deliveries. New Zealand's lower order struggled to find the same fluency in the closing overs, as India recovered from Allen's onslaught to concede only 119 runs in the last 20 overs. But by then, the damage had already been done.