Pune: Toota hal ghar ka ghamand!.. was the overriding sentiment in the MCA Stadium Press Box as Tom Latharm’s New Zealand recorded their first-ever Test series win in India, and in the process, consigned the home team to their first-home Test series losing 12 years.
The enormity of India’s historic defeat in Pune cannot be understated by any stretch of the imagination given the kind of fortress the Indian team had built over the years, surrounded by the aura of being ‘Invincibles” in home territory. This is an Indian team that was losing a Test series on home soil after winning 18 consecutive series at home, which included winning 42 Test matches out of the 54 played since 2012.
To put that stat in perspective, no other team has won more than ten successive Test series at home during this period. An Indian team comprising some of the best batters in world cricket, Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma, along with arguably the best spin twins in home conditions, Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja, came unstuck against a NZ side who relied on collective effort, dynamic strategy and smarter game plans to outwit their more fancied opponents.
Although Washington Sundar produced the finest moment of his career with figures of 7/58 in the first innings, NZ still managed 259 on a Pune track that put the Indian batsmen in all sorts of trouble. Indian batsmen have traditionally been known to be the best players of spin in world cricket from the days of GavasJear and Vishwanath to the 90s legends like Tendulkar, Dravid, and Laxman, Today, that halo that encircled them has been shattered to pieces by the subtle variations produced by the Kiwi's left-arm spinner Mitchell Santner, which bamboozled India's batting superstars across both innings.
This Test series loss will hurt the Indian team but there are no excuses as they played poor cricket, and in sport, the law of averages eventually catches up. ‘What goes up must ultimately come down. As in life, so in sport.
