India might somewhat justifiably believe that their struggles during this series against New Zealand were the result of circumstances coming together. The rain in Bengaluru. The toss in Pune. But the chaos in Mumbai is less easy to wish away.
They were on top, picking up seven wickets for 76 runs to limit the opposition to 235, and responding to that with 78 for 1 in 17 overs on a pitch where first-innings runs will be incredibly important. Until 4.47pm on Friday, everything was going according to plan. And then, in 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 look on in horror. A set batter falling to a reverse sweep with stumps approaching. A nightwatcher dismissed first ball and using up a review. A world-beater run-out going for a quick single. Morne Morkel had his head in his hands. Ravindra Jadeja didn’t have the time to react even 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 cannot blame one person. Everyone makes mistakes. The next batters will have to stitch some partnership and try to get [the score] beyond 230. Only then the second innings will come into play. So it will be better if the incoming batters contribute.”
New Zealand have done what few others have been able to, and hang on until the moment where the balance can shift. They showed it in Bengaluru in their first innings when Tim Southee and Rachin Ravindra added vital lower-order runs. They showed it in Pune when they toppled India from 50 for 1 to 156 all out. And they’ve shown it again, here, breaking a 53-run stand between Shubman Gill and Yashasvi Jaiswal with 13 minutes to go to stumps and then topping that with the direct-hit run-out of Virat Kohli.
“You want to keep taking wickets,” Daryl Mitchell, who top-scored for New Zealand with 82, said. “It’s always nice. Look, it’s the nature of the surface and playing Test cricket over here, the ebbs and flows happen throughout the day and happy with how we hung in there while they were building a partnership, and when you get one you hopefully can get two and three.
“And thats our motto, its just keep giving to the team, the way Rachin and some of the other guys chased the ball right to the boundary, that’s the stuff we always pride ourselves on. It means everyone is engaged, everyone is giving to the team, so that if we get one, hopefully we get another and its nice that it paid off tonight.”
Kohli was fully kitted up when the second wicket fell, but Mohammed Siraj came out to bat instead. The nightwatcher fell first ball and burned a review trying to survive. Kohli then came in but he took on Matt Henry’s arm at mid-on and lost. Rishabh Pant came out. It was a good thing no more wickets fell because the next man in, Sarfaraz Khan, wasn’t 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’ve been reminded of these things everywhere they’ve 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’s going through in his mind,” he said. “But if you are behind in the series, and such a situation comes, it feels you panicked because you are 2-0 down and committed an error. But if you are 2-0 up and the same thing happens, everyone says it happens. But if you are behind in the series, even the small things look big. Our top order has made mistakes, so the next six batters need to go close to or beyond 230. If we bat well in the first innings, things will be easier in the second.”
