SO that's what it takes to beat India in T20Is? If you are asked to bat first on a ground infamously known as friendly for teams chasing, you have to keep going. That's what Glenn Phillips and Michael Bracewell did as soon as they came together with the score at 4/112 off 10.4 overs. By the time they were separated by Prince Yadav, the score had rocketed along to 227: 115 runs off 42 balls. Eleven of those 42 balls disappeared into different parts of the ground, while there were seven fours as well. There was also a sequence of 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 0, 6, 2, 6 in a quite surreal nine-ball spell across the 16th and 17th overs.
After Prince put paid to the carnage, the visitors, whose openers are life-sized propellers in this format, couldn't get going. For a change, they felt the pressure of scoring sixes. For so long, this hedonistic batting unit combined fearlessness and bravura energy, batters who treated this format to aura farm. They had a rare off night and stumbled to 9/172 to give hosts an 87-run win. Within the context of the series, the loss doesn't matter as India had already claimed it by winning the first three games.
However, when the two teams lined up for the anthems at Eden Park, there was a feeling of this being a missed opportunity for the visitors. They had sealed the series, so now would have been the perfect time to give Vaibhav Sooryavanshi an extended run in the side. It would have also been the perfect time to have drafted Kuldeep Yadav into the XI. But the duo weren't included as the team management and the leadership group eschewed those options.
Why was Sooryavanshi dropped? A couple of days ago, the 15-year-old had smashed his way to a 19-ball 45. The next T20I World Cup is going to be in that part of the world, and it's going to be a World Cup where Sooryavanshi will likely be one of your two openers. Why then would the management deprive the 15-year-old of an opportunity like this? Granted, there's an element of trying to 'protect' him because of his age, so it's wise to shield him away from the cameras now and then. A week ago, batting Sitanshu Kotak had said, 'you can't make changes to the XI because people like him'. But is it okay to make changes to the XI just to take him out of the team after a performance like the one he had produced at Wellington?
Team protocols may mean that an incumbent gets to walk back and automatically reclaim their spot as soon as they have recovered from an injury — Ishan Kishan had missed the second and third T20Is because of one — but surely the teenager could have been retained with the series wrapped up? "He is very talented, and I believe he has a bright, bright future ahead," Kotak had said in the same press conference. "So once he gets his opportunities and settles down, he will learn a lot of things." The best way to 'settle down and learn a lot of things' is to play. With the 15-year-old set to return to India after the end of the T20I series, it just feels like a chance spurned to further blood him for future challenges in these parts.
At 31, Kuldeep's omission is also galling but for different reasons. While it wasn't surprising to see him missing — since he made his debut in July 2017, he has featured in 56 games. To put things in perspective, India have featured in 221 games in the same time period. If the team management has decided to not play one of cricket's most sui generis talents — a frontline left-arm wristspinner — because for what he isn't (an all-rounder), it just means that the team management is not asking the right questions. Again, with the T20 World Cup in these parts in two years, what stopped them from playing him in a game like this? If you aren't going to play him in a dead rubber, when exactly will you play him? And if you have decided to have preconceived notions about him, why even bother to take him along for the ride? Or, they could have asked him to play in the shadow red-ball tour.
Also, this could have been a good chance to have batted first, considering they had won the toss. Yet, they stuck to the safer template of fielding first. If you aren't going to experiment when the stakes are low, when exactly will you feel safe to experiment?
Brief scores: New Zealand 259/7 in 20 ovs (Allen 31, Phillips 107, Bracewell 65, Mayank 3/48) bt India 172/9 in 20 ovs (Abhishek 27, Tilak 35, Naman 28, Jacob 4/23, Fisher 2/40, Santner 2/24).
