Two weeks into his captaincy, Tom Latham has achieved something which could make him feel similar to what his compatriot Sir Edmund Hillary must have experienced after becoming the first man to scale Mount Everest. A Test series win in India after 13 tours is nothing short of a dream for the generations of Kiwi cricketers, ever since their first trip in 1955.
Latham’s men came into the series on the back of a 0-2 whitewash in spin-friendly Sri Lankan conditions, and to make matters worse, their most-experienced batter Kane Williamson is still nursing a groin injury back home, but the captain stressed on the importance of sticking to their basics that eventually helped them achieve the unthinkable — breaching the impregnable bastion that has repelled several of his contemporaries in the past decade.
“It is obviously a special feeling. Very proud to be up here. It is a team effort. This game was a clear example of everyone stepping up at the right times. Very special. When you come here, you want to put your best foot forward,” were the first words from the skipper during the post-match presentation.
“I don’t think we played that badly in Sri Lanka. I guess you look at the result, 2-0 down… I thought we did a lot of good things. Then coming here, I guess it was about trying to stick to our basics and doing as best as we can and I guess trying to play the long game here. We talk about firing a shot and I think we have done that over the last two games. Both surfaces have been completely different. We’ve needed to adapt and I think we’ve adapted pretty well.”
“(It was about) trying to be positive as best as we can. I think the method that we played with last night and I guess putting ourselves on the front foot, was outstanding. Runs were the most important thing out there, not necessarily time,” he added.
Santner’s side soreness got better with each wicket!
Mitchell Santner, the chief architect of New Zealand’s series-clinching win in Pune, had to deal with side soreness after ending up bowling 48.3 overs for his 13 wickets across the two India innings. Primarily a white-ball specialist, Santner admitted that the spike in workload could be a reason but jokingly claimed that he felt better every time he took a wicket.
“It’s a bit strange for me (to bowl that many overs). My side’s a little sore. Must be the spike in my workloads – 20-odd overs out there. I felt it a little bit early on in my spell, but I guess in that kind of situation you just want to keep going. Every time I got a wicket, it felt a little better,” he said after being adjudged the Player of the Match.
“I guess every time you take wickets, you get a little bit of confidence. A few wickets under your belt is always nice. The belief… kind of land the ball on the same spot for a long time, the odd change of pace, and yeah, that’s all we’re trying to do as a spin unit,” he added.
It’s a collective failure: Rohit
Outplayed in two consecutive matches, Rohit Sharma had no hesitation in owning up the responsibility and terming it as a ‘collective failure’, moments after India’s dominant 18 series-winning run was halted by the BlackCaps.
“It is a collective failure. The team has failed to accept the challenge thrown at us,” he admitted.
“Disappointing. It is not what we expected. NZ played better cricket than us. We failed to respond to challenges and we sit here with that result. I don’t think we batted well enough to get runs on the board. You have to take 20 wickets, but the batters have to put runs on the board as well. We did not put up enough runs, then conceded a 100-run lead.”
“It was a fightback from us, but it was always going to be challenging. We thought we could chase but the continuous challenges we could not cope. When they started off, they were 200 for 3 and for us to come back and bowl them 259 was great. It was not a pitch where a lot was happening, but we did not bat well enough. NZ played better,” he added.
With the focus now shifting to the Wankhede where the final Test will be played from November 1, Rohit & Co will face a stiffer challenge to avoid a whitewash. “We want to show up at Wankhede and win that Test,” said Rohit.