Kohli top edged the bouncer and Ish Sodhi made no mistake in taking the catch. We really got to be patient on this wicket I guess.
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The 31-year-old wicketkeeper did a wonderful job throughout the day and held another sharp catch to dismiss the other opener, Murali Vijay, off Sodhi. It’s a lesson learnt and hopefully we can put up a better show in the second innings.
India’s batting coach Sanjay Bangar said an early wicket was all the home team needed when play resumes on Saturday. All we’ve got to do now is to put pressure on them while bowling. “It’s a good total to play around with”, he said with confidence.
“It was hard to score runs on this wicket”, said the Indian opener, the innings’ top scorer with 65.
Santner was a central figure in restricting the hosts to 291-9 after they had appeared set to post an imposing first innings score when reaching 154-1 midway through the second session at Green Park.
It was not a good day for India today.
Not the cracked pitch, not Rohit and Ashwin’s short-lived 52-run stand for the 6th wicket, not Boult’s stunning 3-wicket spell later in the day either – after they looked doomed with India at 105/1 at lunch, it was New Zealand’s fightback in the second session that promotes this series to a contest. When it doesn’t you fall on the wrong side. We have got to rethink our shot selection, and come back in the second innings and put up a better show.
“You never know how we go about it on Day 2. Whatever has got you here, you got to back that”, he said backing his colleague.
Catch the live cricket streaming of India vs New Zealand first Test at Kanpur on StarSports.com and Hotstar. They tried to make us pull back the length.
Thus, rarely, if ever, we are seeing a visiting team, especially from outside the sub-continent, play with more spinners after the home team opted for just two spinners.
For New Zealand, pacer Trent Boult (3/57) and left-arm spinner Mitchell Santner (3/77) picked up three wickets each while Neil Wagner (1/42), Mark Craig (1/59) and Indian-origin leg-spinner Inderbir Singh Sodhi (1/50) chipped in with a wicket apiece.
When told that India also think that they are in a good position, Santner refused to debate on the point. It was pretty flat to start with. They did bat well. We need to built little partnerships and not think about playing the fourth innings here.
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Mitchell Santner, who picked 3-77, said if bowled in the right areas, run-scoring can become hard. It’s very tough when you’re sweating quite a bit, but you just have to find a way to keep the ball dry to try get the reverse swing.
