After a poor showing in the 1st innings, defeat was looking almost inevitable for the Kiwis but considering the sort of fight they have shown so far on the tour, one expected a better effort from the New Zealanders in the 2nd innings.
But the story was not a lot different this time as well, in fact worse.
The Kiwis started the fourth day’s play on 24 for 1 and were blown away by the Indian bowlers with not even a single batsman scoring a half-century. It is quite ironic that the best partnership of the Kiwi innings came in the shape of 9th wicket
when Tim Southee and Andy McKay put together 51 runs.
http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Ishant-Sharma-c64566 and Harbhajan Singh picked up 3 wickets each. Pragyan Ojha and Suresh Raina also chipped in with 4 wickets between them and Sreesanth
went wicket less although he bowled with good rhythm and energy. http://www.senore.com/Cricket/India-c750 won the match by a huge margin of an innings and 198 runs.
http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Rahul-c83321 Dravid was named Man of the Match for his brilliant innings of 191 runs and Harbhajan Singh was declared the Man of the Series, surprisingly for his efforts with the bat. He made consecutive hundreds in the first 2 matches of the series. He might be
happy for what he has done with the bat but surely understands that his primary job was to take wickets and he should have done better in that regard.
After a couple of disappointed tests, India would be very happy with their performance as they can take a lot of positives from this performance. Zaheer Khan’s injury gave way to Ishant Sharma who made a nice come back with 7 wickets in the match. Sreesanth
bowled pretty well throughout the match with Harbhajan and Ojha playing their part as well.
With a thumping win in the last Test and with that the series, India has once again proved their supremacy in Test cricket as the leading team in the world. Things seem to be going in the right direction for Indian cricket.
Although the batting performance in this test was not up to the standards by the New Zealanders but still they can take a lot of heart about their showings in India so far.
Majority of the cricket pundits were predicting a 3-0 loss for New Zealand in the series but they fought well in the first 2 tests. The biggest positive for the Kiwis has been the performance of some of the youngsters like Kane Williamson, Martin Guptill
and Tim McIntosh. New Zealand have always been a better team when it comes to the limited overs format of the game so they would be hopeful that they can give a better fight to India in the ODIs.
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