First blood

A nice start to the tour, NZ beat India by 7 wickets in the first 20-20, and already Suhas’ quite reasonable predictions are off (he predicted a 0-2 NZ loss in the 20-20s).

I missed the game, but the scoreboard seems to show that we achieved the win with the same kind of single-minded efficiency that we bring to our ODIs. After about the 6th over, we never seemed to be more than 1 rpo off the pace.

Looking at the Indian scoreboard however really reveals the important factor in India’s inability to post a score to challenge New Zealand – cheap wickets. Gambhir, Sharma, Singh and Dhoni all went cheaply, getting 16 runs between them but using up 23 balls, a run rate less than half the overall rate – so that’s nearly 20 lost runs.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, February 26th, 2009 at 12:02 amand is filed under Ind in NZ 08/09. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “First blood”

  • Suhas Says:
    February 26th, 2009 at 8:05 am

    Happy to be proved wrong, Ben! When India started like a runaway train, I thought a chase of 200+ was definitely on the cards, but the bowlers held their nerve spectacularly.

    The way NZ went about the chase was rather similar to the one in Sydney, with Baz batting through the innings, though he didn’t look at his best. Guptill was extremely lucky to be out there in the after the lbw appeal off Ishant Sharma first ball was turned down, but probably played the best innings of the day.

  • Leg Break Says:
    February 26th, 2009 at 10:53 am

    Here’s a review for you Ben.

    Yes, Guptill was lucky, but the woeful umpiring was spread pretty evenly throughout the game

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