6 min readNov 26, 2022 07:06 AM IST
First published on: Nov 25, 2022 at 03:20 PM IST
Shardul Thakur began the 40th over of the New Zealand chase with four successive short balls. As they sat up on the slowish Eden Park surface at Thakur’s medium-fast pace, Tom Latham pulled all of them for boundaries between deep midwicket and long leg. Latham then squirted the change-up fuller one past short third man for four and off the last ball of the over, also reached his century, having taken just 25 balls to move to 100 from a run-a-ball 50. Latham’s stunning acceleration was the decisive blow that blew away India’s slender hopes to overcome what would eventually grow into a match-winning, unbroken 221-run partnership with his skipper Kane Williamson.
India had grappled with a pitch that had played stickier at the start to post 306 for 7 in the first of three ODIs, with half-centuries from Shreyas Iyer, stand-in captain Shikhar Dhawan and Shubman Gill, followed by Washington Sundar’s calm, calculated hitting. And the fiery Umran Malik’s twin strikes on ODI debut had seemingly put them ahead with New Zealand reduced to 88 for 3 at the 20-over mark.
But Williamson and Latham dug in for the long haul, batting reasonably safely enough in the first half of the stand to survive and then prosper on a track that was also turning sharply at times.
The Auckland venue is a notoriously difficult ground to defend at with its tiny straight boundaries – just 58 metres – and short square boundaries. Wary of the full length’s vulnerability to the easy straight hit, India decided to pull back their lengths considerably in the latter half. However, it was the marginally short of a good length delivery that had proved difficult to get away when New Zealand had bowled. The hosts also had the express pace of Lockie Ferguson, Adam Milne and Matt Henry. Neither India’s second ODI debutant Arshdeep Singh nor Thakur had that kind of pace and zip.
Latham, in particular, and Williamson feasted on the shorter lengths. Latham is excellent on the square-of-the-wicket shots, and his range of pulls and cuts, as well as the odd sweep, buried India in a deluge of boundaries. He used the extra speed of Umran Malik adeptly to his advantage, depositing him over fine leg for six.
“We bowled short of length and Latham attacked us there,” Dhawan admitted after the seven-wicket defeat. “That’s where he took the game away from us, especially in the 40th over. That’s where the momentum shifted.”
Even before that Thakur over, India had barely generated a chance, apart from some deliveries holding up and landing in empty spaces off leading edges. Washington Sundar came the closest in the 36th over, but Dhawan couldn’t latch on to a difficult chance off Williamson at midwicket, the dying ball landing yorker-style at his fingertips on the ground. His trajectory difficult to get underneath, Washington gave away just 42 from his ten overs, but in the absence of someone such as Hardik Pandya, India had no one else to turn to as all the other four bowlers went for runs.
The straight boundary perhaps on his mind, Yuzvendra Chahal was reluctant to give the ball too much air and dropped it short often, and was cut and pulled for boundaries easily.
Arshdeep looked a bit clueless in the absence of swing. Having conceded a few fours in the search for early movement with his pitched-up lengths, he started bowling shorter but was picked off comfortably to the smaller boundaries.
Thakur wilted in the face of Latham’s charge but he had actually begun very promisingly, sticking to good-length outswingers and troubling the outside edge of Finn Allen constantly.
Umran thrills on debut
It was only his fourth game overall for India, and first since July, but Umran Malik seems to have added a healthy dose of control to his searing pace. He has a long way to go in terms of adding variations, of course, but both his wickets were a result of not just speed, but awareness of conditions too. He bowled wider lines to Devon Conway and Daryl Mitchell, having both reaching out and mis-hitting, with the buffer of the relatively bigger square boundary.
He breached the 150-kph mark a few times and generally hit the bat pretty hard, straightening one to induce an outside edge from Williamson that flew past the wicketkeeper. After Latham mishit him for a six over the keeper, Umran responded with a ripping yorker that burst through just past the off stump before bat could come down. He will over time have to find answers when batsmen start using his pace against him, but as he showed with his starting burst, he could be a vital wicket-taking option in the middle overs for India in this format.
Washington’s nerveless hitting
He’s hardly got chances with the bat in white-ball for India so far, but Washington Sundar showcased his hitting skills on Friday with an unbeaten 37 off 16 at No 7. Displaying an ability to toy around with the field, Washington pulled in the air for four when midwicket was up, he punched in the air for four when extra cover was up, and also brought out the ramp over the keeper and the scoop over short fine leg.
Washington’s cameo helped push India past 300 after they had slipped to 160 for 4, failing to kick on from an opening stand of 124 between Dhawan and Gill. Iyer held the innings together in the company of Sanju Samson, and progressed to crunch a few sixes with his typical slashes and slogs before Washington’s final flourish.
Kane WIlliamson and Tom Latham making 221 runs unbeaten partnership against India in Auckland.(AP) 
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