Calcutta/Rajkot: To bounce back from big defeats in India is never easy, but New Zealand showed character en route to a series levelling 40-run win in the second Twenty20 International at the Saurashtra Cricket Association Stadium in Rajkot on Saturday.
Colin Munro rode his luck to score his second T20I hundred that took New Zealand to a daunting 196 for two.The bowlers then delivered to restrict India despite Virat Kohli’s valiant 41-ball 65.
Trent Boult (4 for 34) put in a star performance as New Zealand restricted India to 156 for seven in their 20 overs.
Rohit Sharma and Shikhar Dhawan took the game away from the visitors at the Kotla in the opening T20I with a record 153-run stand, but things were vastly different in the second match.
The decider will be held in Thiruvananthapuram on Tuesday.
New Zealand captain Kane Williamson was pretty happy with the result.
“I guess a hugely contrasting performance from the last game. An improved performance on all sides… we needed to keep doing this to beat India here and going on to the next game, we need to repeat this,” Williamson stressed.
“Great partnership up at the top, and obviously Munners getting a hundred was fantastic. When a batsman gets that many runs, the team will always get a big total.
“Guptill and Bruce gave good support and the bowlers did really well to defend it. Whenever you watch a player similar to you perform, you want to emulate them and our two spinners did really well… They consistently came in to bowl tough overs and they bowled very well,” the New Zealand captain explained.
Virat Kohli too complimented the New Zealand batsmen.
“I thought New Zealand were pretty good with the bat. We did not take our chances. At one stage they were looking to get 225-230 but credit to Bumrah and Bhuvi to have pulled things back. I think we were pretty happy with the way the last five overs went,” said the India captain.
“But eventually we were not good enough with the bat. When you are chasing 200, all the batsmen need to chip in or one guy needs to go over the strike rate of 200. Once you lose a couple of wickets, it becomes tough to pick up your areas. MS (Dhoni) was very good in the end, but we left ourselves too much to get.
“It happens when you want to go for big shots. It has happened with a lot of batsmen, sometimes you are in good form, but you don’t get enough balls. We back our batsmen though. We back Hardik, and it’s just a little glitch,” said Kohli.
He didn’t think the dew played a big role in the outcome.
“Not during the early half of the innings... May be after 13-14 overs it started gripping. No excuses, but we were not good with the bat. We admit that. There was not any dew that we thought would settle in. We lost the toss, we did not get to choose what we would have done. We were just not good enough on the day.”
