Ind vs NZ – 3rd Test – Eight balls at Wankhede – India’s post-Halloween horror story

On By Littum

India could rightly believe that their struggles in this series against New Zealand were the result of circumstances coming together. The rain in Bengaluru. Cast in Pune. But the chaos of Mumbai is less easy to wish away.

They were on top, picking up seven wickets for 76 runs to restrict the opposition to 235, and responded with 78 for 1 in 17 overs on a pitch where first-innings runs will be incredibly important. Until 16:47 on Friday, everything went according to plan. And then, over the next five minutes, it all fell apart. Three wickets in eight legal balls and a day that was theirs to claim was back in the balance.

The Indian players in the dressing room could only watch in horror. A set of batters fall to a reverse sweep with stumps approaching. A night watch dismissed the first ball and used a review. A worldwide run-out going for a quick single. Morne Morkel had his head in his hands. Ravindra Jadeja didn’t have time to react that much.

“Everything happened in ten minutes,” Jadeja said at the end of the first day’s play in Mumbai. “But it happens. It’s a team game. You can’t blame one person. Everyone makes mistakes. The next batsmen will have to stitch some partnership and try to get (scores) beyond 230. Only then does the second innings come into play. So it will be better if the incoming batters contribute.”

New Zealand has done what few others have been able to do, hang on until the moment the balance can shift. They showed it in Bengaluru in their first innings as Tim Southee and Rachin Ravindra added important lower-order runs. They showed it in Pune when they bowled India out from 50 for 1 to 156 all out. And they have shown it again, here, breaking a 53-run stand between Shubman Gill and Yashasvi Jaiswal with 13 minutes to go at stumps and then topping it off with the direct hit run-out of Virat Kohli.
“You want to keep taking wickets,” said Daryl Mitchell, top scorer for New Zealand with 82. “It’s always nice. Look, that’s the nature of the surface and playing Test cricket over here, it ebbs and flows throughout the day and happy how we hung in there while they built a partnership and when you get one you hopefully can get two and three.

“And that’s our motto, it’s just keep giving to the team, the way Rachin and some of the other guys chased the ball right to the boundary, those are the things we’re always proud of. It means that everyone’s committed, everyone’s giving to the team, so if we get one, hopefully we’ll get another, and it’s great that it paid off tonight.”

Kohli was fully equipped when the second wicket fell, but Mohammed Siraj came out to bat instead. The night watchman dropped the first ball and burned a review in an attempt to survive. Kohli then came in but he took Matt Henry’s arm at mid on and lost. Rishabh Pant came out. It was a good thing that no more wickets fell because the next man in, Sarfaraz Khan, was not in his whites.

India have already lost this series and are looking to avoid their first ever home whitewash in a series of three or more Tests. They have been reminded of these things everywhere they have turned. Was their plunge into this possibly avoidable situation a sign of a team buckling under pressure? Jadeja didn’t think so.

“Only the individual can tell what is going on in his mind,” he said. “But if you’re down in the series and a situation like that comes up, you feel panicked because you’re down 2-0 and made a mistake. But if you’re up 2-0 and the same thing happens, everybody says, that happens. But if you’re behind in the series, even the little things look big. Our top order has to be close to or over 230. If we hit well in the first innings the other.”