Former cricketer and head coach Anil Kumble was disappointed with Indian batters for their performance show on Day 02 of the second test of the New Zealand test series.
Kumble has pointed out that the poor shot selection by Indian batters cost them and also credited New Zealand bowlers.
New Zealand was considered the favourite to wrap up the series in Pune. They had a dominant day, with Mitchell Santner picking a seven-wicket haul involving the destruction in hosts batting line restricting the hosts to 156 runs, giving a commanding first-innings lead of 103 runs.
“I thought I saw the shot selection chosen by the Indian batters wasn’t great at all. I mean, the first session certainly cost India this whole day. I mean, it was disappointing, but credit to the New Zealand bowlers as well.”
“Though they bowled in really good areas, they varied the pace and kept at it. You know, they never looked to sort of be hassled. They attacked. That was something that was lacking.”
“When India bowled first, they attacked the Indian batters, not worried about their reputation. They felt that on the surface we had a chance,” Kumble told Jio Cinema.
The hosts known for crushing visiting teams at home, found themselves at a tough spot at the receiving end of Mitchell Santner’s spin master as they collapsed within a session and a half in Pune.
“Although the score that New Zealand had scored wasn’t really good, that didn’t really push India out of the game at all. With the advantage of winning the toss, 259. You come in looking to attack, looking to pick wickets.”
“I thought they read the pitch really well, and they also bowled really well. And the selection is something that India needs to be worried about and very quickly.”
“When we come back to that, we are really hopeful of a better performance in the second innings and there was a better performance from the New Zealand batters as well,” he said.
Only Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shubman Gill and Ravindra Jadeja were the scorers in the first innings picking scores of 30, 30 and 28 respectively. The senior players Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli were sent back to the pavilion for a duck and one run respectively.
With Pant and Washington Sundar’s 18 runs each, the hosts scored 156 runs in their first innings. Meanwhile, New Zealand started their second innings and scored 198/5 runs by the end of day 02 at MCA Stadium.
