Black Caps pull off test cricket’s most stunning series win against India
Monday, 4 November 2024
Third test, Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai: New Zealand 235 and 174 beat India 263 and 121 (Rishabh Pant 64; Ajaz Patel 6-57, Glenn Phillips 3-42) by 25 runs. Click here for full scoreboard.
How do you fathom that?
The Black Caps pulled off what is already being regarded as the greatest series win in test cricket history, registering a 3-0 clean-sweep of India after beating the hosts by 25 runs in the third test in Mumbai on Sunday.
Requiring only 147 for victory on day three after quickly removing New Zealand's last wicket, India were bowled out for 121 as spinners Ajaz Patel (6-57) and Glenn Phillips (3-42) tormented a team which was meant to give their rivals a thorough spanking in each encounter.
When the Black Caps came home for a brief break with their tails collectively between their legs after a dispiriting 2-0 series defeat in Sri Lanka, no one - and you could almost certainly include the players and coaching staff among that group totalling nil - envisaged that within a month they would become the first team to win all three tests in a series in India.
That they did so - on the back of four consecutive test losses, after a change of captain, without their best batter, with just one specialist slow-bowler in the land of spin, and up against the hosts who had won their last 18 series at home since 2012 - defied all logic.
Less than a fortnight after the White Ferns produced one of the biggest shocks in cricket history by capturing the women’s T20 World Cup, the Black Caps somehow landed a leviathan.
Prior to this series, the NZ men’s side had won just two of their 36 Tests in India - in 1969 and 1988. Their opponents had never lost a three-game series at home 3-0.
But New Zealand’s bowlers constantly found a way to dismiss the much-vaunted home team batters - India only once tallied more than 263 in an innings once in six attempts.
Almost three years after the Mumbai-born Patel became just the third bowler to take 10 wickets in a test innings, the left-arm spinner backed up his first-innings exploits of 5-103 to end the series-finale with 11 victims at the same stadium.
After the nervous hosts had tumbled to 29-5, wicketkeeper-batter Rishabh Pant became India’s key player, capable of quickly altering fortunes with his belligerent approach.
New Zealand missed a trick to get rid of him when they didn’t ask for a second umpiring opinion with the score at 52-5 and Pant on 21, when a short ball from Patel was missed by the left-handed batter and hit him in the midriff when dropping towards leg stump.
But skipper Tom Latham and his colleagues got it right in time when they challenged another not-out lbw decision against Pant, when on 64 and India just 41 from victory with four wickets in hand, as TV umpire Paul Reiffel adjudged in New Zealand’s favour.
The end came quickly, as offspinner Phillips took two wickets in as many balls, before Patel appropriately clinched the sweep by bowling Washington Sundar.
It culminated a miraculous three weeks which began with India’s captain Rohit Sharma making The Blunder of Bengaluru by opting to bat on a pitch which had been covered for days due to rain.
It included Mitchell Santner's test of a lifetime, when the oft-maligned allrounder produced the third-best match figures for a NZ bowler in test history in Pune.
It may have ended the test career of Virat Kohli - the fourth-most prolific test runscorer in his country’s history will be part of the squad for their upcoming five-test series in Australia, but after making just one score more than 17 in six turns at bat versus the Black Caps, the 35-year-old can no longer be regarded as a guaranteed selection in the format after 118 games.
It also breathed life back into the hopes of New Zealand making the World Test Championship final next year, after the post-mortem was being set up after a defeat to Sri Lanka by an innings.
It may still need another series sweep when they host England - 2-1 losers in Pakistan this month - in front of sold-out crowds in Christchurch, Wellington and Hamilton as summer starts.
That would be too impossible to comprehend - wouldn’t it?