CT 2017: IND vs NZ warm-up match, Review: Team India dominate Kiwis in the rain inflicted game

Team India initiated their pre-Champions Trophy campaign with the first warm-up game against New Zealand. After an average start with the ball, Indian bowlers pulled things back in control towards the end of the power play and choked the Kiwi batters. With regular wickets, the runs stopped to come and the Indians were all over them. With the bat a slim chase wasn’t going to put Virat Kohli & Co. in the furnace and they were pretty clinical about their business till the point it rained and the match was awarded in their favour.

New Zealand skipper Kane Williamson won the toss and elected to bat first on what looked like a really good batting wicket at the Kennington Oval in London. But with assisting conditions the Indian fast bowlers were dominant and picked up constant wickets – when Virat Kohli introduced Ravindra Jadeja in the attack he got the wickets and Ravichandran Ashwin also was in business bowling leg-spinners. It was for Luke Ronchi’s half century and James Neesham’s 46 that New Zealand managed a total close to 200.

Mohammed Shami who was making his comeback in 50 overs cricket with this game picked up three top-order wickets shelling runs at 5.87 to be the pick of the bowlers on the day. He first removed Martin Guptill who played a false shot to mid-on after hitting a couple of boundaries. Williamson couldn’t add more than 8 runs and Neil Broom was out for a duck edging it to Dhoni behind the wickets.

Pacer Bhuvneshwar Kumar was introduced as the change bowler and he also picked 3 wickets cleaning up the Black Caps lower order. Jadeja had a couple while Umesh Yadav and Ashwin shared one each as the crumbly opposition was bowled out for a meagre 189 in 38.4 overs.

In absence of Rohit Sharma India started with Ajinkya Rahane and Shikhar Dhawan. But the Mumbaikar struggled, he couldn’t get going and was just a matter of time before he got out. Tim Southee finally bowled the ball that released him off the pressure and the man everyone wanted to see bat in England Virat Kohli was out in the middle.

Dhawan also had his troubles against the ball moving away from him early on but did well to spend time in the middle, a dropped chance also helped him in his bid to get used to the conditions. He played a patient knock and scored 40 runs from 59 balls while Kohli at the other end mixed caution with aggression in his 55-ball 52 hitting 6 boundaries.

Dinesh Kartik couldn’t make any use of the opportunity given to him being promoted up the order to No.4 and after looking completely out of sorts in the first 8 balls walked back after helping Mitchell Santner with a catch on the 9th without bothering to open his account.

Captain Kohli then had MS Dhoni for company and the duo kept the team on the course of the chase while it started to drizzle. Dhoni survived a close leg-before appeal early in his inning and then played a couple of good shots one of which went to the boundary and other over the ropes which would give him some confidence going ahead in the tournament.

Team India had 129 runs on the board for the loss of 3 wickets in 26 overs with Dhoni unbeaten on 17 from 22 when the rain got heavy enough to interrupt play and didn’t allow resumption. The match was awarded to the Men in Blue by 45 runs as per D/L method.

Brief Scores:

New Zealand: 189/10 in 38.4 overs (Luke Ronchi 66; Mohammed Shami 3/47, Bhuvneshwar Kumar 3/28)

India: 129/3 (Virat Kohli 52, Shikhar Dhawan 40; James Neesham 1/11)