India’s disastrous outing in the first innings against New Zealand saw them bowled out for 46 runs, a record low for the team at home. Five batters were dismissed for ducks as a Matt Henry five-fer powered New Zealand’s seamers to bundling out India in an extremely impressive performance.
India will certainly be in for some major questioning following the batting failures, in a similar vein to what happened after India’s 36 all-out in Adelaide in 2020.
Captain Rohit Sharma was aware of the intensity of the questions that would come for him, and prefaced his press conference with a typical sense of humour, stepping out to face reporters’ questions himself.
“Chalao talwaar (get your knives out),” said Rohit at the beginning of the conference, showing an awareness of the pressure that would be heaped on his shoulder from the media following the poor day India had in Bangalore.
Rohit, who was the first wicket to fall, was dismissed for just 2 runs trying to break the shackles after a difficult opening spell.
Expanding further on the struggles of India and the sudden collapse, Rohit said “Each batter walked into bat with a plan to tackle the bowlers. Every body knew how the pitch was and what was happening.”
“But, sometimes, in trying to do something, you don’t execute your plans well,” continued Rohit. “Today, it was a bad day for us. We have played a lot of such matches in the past. It was a challenge, yes.”
‘They play in such conditions back home…’
Rohit also gave plenty of credit for the manner in which New Zealand bowled, taking the most advantage of what were threatening conditions in Bangalore in the overcast first session. “The conditions suited New Zealand the most. They play in such conditions back home. Their bowlers challenged our bat a lot. They made us play every second, and third ball.”
“That’s exactly what you have to do when you see conditions like this. There was a fair bit of help and they extracted that help pretty well and we didn’t respond to that challenge well,” concluded Rohit.
New Zealand then went on to look fairly comfortable with bat, putting on 176-3 in their innings before stumps. Devon Conway put on 91 runs before being dismissed, and Daryl Mitchell and Rachin Ravindra looked in good touch as they went in not out overnight.
India will be desperate for early wickets on day three, with restricting New Zealand’s lead the only way to make a fight back in this match.
