Mumbai: In the end, all it took was 43 minutes for India to polish off the remaining five Kiwi wickets on the morning of Day Four at the Wankhede Stadium and record a ‘Himalayan’ 372run win— their biggest-ever (in terms of runs) in Test cricket. Finished as a contest once India skittled out New Zealand for 62 in merely 29.5 overs on Day Two, the second Test stretched for a while more than it should have, purely because skipper Virat Kohli didn’t enforce the follow on.
The only surprise on Monday at Wankhede was Kiwi left-arm spinner Ajaz Patel not winning the Man of the Match award despite his incredible ‘perfect 10’ in India’s first innings, with the adjudicators preferring Mayank Agarwal, who cracked a match-defining 150 in the first innings and then hit 62 in the second dig, for the honour instead.
The humongous Test win, and the 1-0 series triumph, was sweet revenge for India over an opponent which beat them in the final of the World Test Championship in Southampton by eight wickets in completely different conditions six months earlier. After clinching this home series 1-0, they regained their No 1 ranking in Tests on Monday, and now stand third on the WTC table, with 58.33 percentage points, while New Zealand have slipped to the sixth spot. It would be interesting to see how that position changes after both the teams are done with their next assignments — India tour South Africa, while the Kiwis host Bangladesh.
This story is from the December 07, 2021 edition of The Times of India Mumbai.
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This story is from the December 07, 2021 edition of The Times of India Mumbai.
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