Black Caps vs. India

The Black Caps, as New Zealand's cricket team are known, aren't renowned as one of the world's great cricket teams. This summer, however, they've had a bit of a resurgence - first, sending the West Indies home without a series win (beaten in test matches, tied in ODIs and beaten in Twenty20) and now inflicting a series defeat on India in the ODI series. The series had already been won by the time the tour came to Wellington, having won 3 and tied one, but there was still the prospect of being undefeated against what was, until recently, the top team in the world (New Zealand's earlier wins in the series had caused their halo to lose its shine, and they'd dropped behind Australia in the ICC rankings).

We'd booked the afternoon off work, and went to the Featherston bar & Grill for a spot of lunch with my work crowd. A lot of them were going to the game as they'd scored free tickets handed out by ANZ, who are the major sponsor of the Black Caps, and cricket in New Zealand in general. (We'd had to pay for our tickets as I had foolishly used up my allocation on the West Indies test match. Why "foolishly"? Well, the test match had started on a Wednesday - a canny ploy by the organisers to ensure that days 4 and 5 would fall on the Saturday and Sunday, thus maximising ticket sales. I'd got tickets for the Saturday. Unfortunately, they'd failed to inform the cricketers of their cunning plan, and the Black Caps routed the West Indies in 3 days.)

We reached the Stadium in time for the opening ball, and watched as the Black Caps, put in to bat by India (who have won the toss on all 5 matches - someone should take a look at that coin), started off slowly and carefully. Whilst early wickets went down, with Jesse Ryder again failing to advance to a big score, the partnership of Williamson and Taylor put on 152 - Taylor getting his second century of the series and Williamson his fifth 50. As the innings closed, more wickets fell as the remaining batsmen took more chances to advance the score, and they finished on 303/5 with strong scoring from McCullum, Ronchi and Neesham who all hit at a rate of more than 100%.

304 is not the highest score that India have had to chase in this series (they managed to tie at 314 in Auckland) but they made a slow start, and from the beginning the required run rate was getting away from them. Tight fielding from New Zealand also restricted their boundary shots. Although Kholi put on a score of 82 and held the innings together, they put on runs too slowly and by the time the captain came in at 78/4 the required rate was already 8.7 an over, and it continued to rise. By the time Dhoni was out, the tail had an impossible task before them; wickets fell steadily and they were eventually bowled out with three balls to spare and 87 runs short of the total.