Pune: India’s inadequacies against quality spin bowling stood thoroughly exposed, leaving the side staring at its first ever home Test series loss to New Zealand after the visitors claimed a formidable 301-run lead on day two of the second Test here on Friday.
Tom Latham (86) led New Zealand’s charge with the bat after Mitchell Santner’s brilliant 7/53 destroyed India. His knock consolidated a handy 103-run first-innings lead that the Kiwis had grabbed before reaching 198/5 at stumps.
Tom Blundell (30 not out) had Glenn Phillips (7 not out) for the company when stumps were drawn. The only silver lining for India was Washington Sundar’s continuing good show. He completed 11 wickets in the match, adding four more to his career-best first-innings haul of seven.
Resuming at 16/1, India lost six wickets for a mere 91 runs in the first session.
The biggest shock arrived in the 24th over when their batting superstar Virat Kohli missed a juicy full-toss from Mitchell Santner (4/36) to be cleaned up for a nine-ball 1.
The sight of Kohli missing an innocuous full toss angling into his wickets, going past his awkwardly swinging bat to crash into the middle and leg stumps, and leaving the batter to stare at the ground beneath him in utter despair, was something that will linger for some time to come.
As he trudged back with the MCA Stadium here descending into eerie silence, the only respite Kohli perhaps got was the giant screen not playing replays of his horror dismissal until he had crossed the boundary ropes on his way back.
Yashasvi Jaiswal had done fairly well to reach 30 with four boundaries but going with hard hands to defend a delivery outside off, spinning away from his bat to take an edge to the first slip, gave Glenn Phillips his first wicket.
But as if all that wasn’t enough, Rishabh Pant’s (18) failure to read the lack of bounce while going for a mighty heave across the line against the part-time spin of Phillips, resulted in the ball crashing into his off-stump, leaving India in a desperate situation at 83 for five.
Sarfaraz Khan (11), whose recent outings include 222 not out in Irani Cup and 150 in the last innings at Bengaluru, only had himself to blame after recklessly hitting one straight to mid-off for William O’Rourke to grab an easy catch, off Santner.
Santner, who triggered the collapse by trapping Shubman Gill (30) for the first wicket of the day, kept chipping away as he pinned R Ashwin (4) leg-before off the one that kept low shortly before the break.
