India short-ball chase New Zealand Wellington cricket, Digi Mart USA News (Wellington): There is a distinct fluidity and verve to Shreyas Iyer’s batting that can sometimes circumvent a difficult pitch. In Wellington, six balls into his innings, Iyer played one of those shots, all wrists and barely a shift of the feet, driving the ball over cover for six against Jacob Duffy, who was on a high after dismissing Shubman Gill and Virat Kohli with nagging seam.
For the next 38 balls, most of Iyer’s fluency was buried in the texture of a pitch that offered pace, seam and lift to bowlers. He fell to an ungainly dismissal, punched by the short ball.
Gill called the surface “tricky” and “challenging,” and New Zealand captain Santner repeated the word. “There’s no hiding it,” he added.
The pitch turned India’s short chase into hard work.
That Iyer stroke took India to 27/2, and at that point the double strikes still looked like recoverable setbacks, as the target was just 135. In the next over, Rohit Sharma was teased with a bouncer by Jamieson and hit it for six over midwicket.
For Rohit, a short ball appears to almost stall and travel in slow motion until the bat meets it and resets its velocity. Jamieson’s idea appeared to draw on India’s own tactic earlier in the game.
Much of New Zealand’s middle order had been overwhelmed by pace and skiddy bounce, set up by the tall frame of Gurnoor Brar, and New Zealand had its own tall bowler in Jamieson. The short-ball effect did not return until later.
Rain earlier had left enough moisture to assist seam, and the surface was slightly two-paced. Gill and Kohli had fallen to each of those facets, and Rohit did too, bitten by late movement while trying to force a shot.
That gave New Zealand a firmer standing in the game. At 39/3, Iyer and Axar Patel had to deal with the next phase, and the hosts reset their strategy.
Axar’s first ball lifted sharply past him and nearly took a glove to a diving Glenn Phillips. The next two overs produced one run.
The next real scoring shot came from Axar’s ramp, absorbing Nathan Smith’s pace and steering it over the keeper, but the same shot brought his downfall too. Attempting to repeat it against Matthew Fisher, Axar fell to New Zealand’s plan, with the ball going straight to Duffy, placed for the stroke at third man.
When Naman Dhir also fell to a short ball, caught at the boundary by a fielder placed for his pull, India was further drawn into the hosts’ plan. Surprised by a Jamieson bumper, Dhir became awkwardly tangled.
Dhir has said he dislikes the short ball, which has previously unsettled him.
Iyer, unlike Axar and Dhir, was at the mercy of a vicious ball earlier, when Duffy directed one at his face. Iyer arched out of danger, falling flat on his back.
The strategy tested India’s approach against that length, which nearly opened the game before showers crushed the hosts’ hopes.
New Zealand’s batters were also troubled by the short ball. Five of their batters fell to it, their false-shot percentage was higher than India’s, and it impeded their run flow in the middle overs.
Across both teams, only two batters had a false-shot percentage in single digits against short balls: Tom Latham, who hit three off nine against them without any false shots, and KL Rahul, whose percentage stood at 6.6.
Rohit (37.50) and Rahul (28.57) had the highest boundary percentages against short lengths, countering the threat better than anyone else. Together they scored 39 off 22 balls against the most productive bowling length of the game.
Rahul showed the most control, rolling his wrists over a ball that rose to his helmet for four runs, then punishing the next short ball for six behind square. No other batter hit as many boundaries off short balls, as Rahul took 24 off 14.
That surge nudged India past the DLS par score before the match-ending showers arrived.
“He’s obviously class, right?” Jamieson said after the game, having bowled at Rahul in every practice at Delhi Capitals for two months. “Like, he’s so good and such a rock-solid player at that number six he was today.”
The short ball troubled both sides, but India managed to pull out of difficulty. New Zealand went into a shell against it.
India overcompensated at times, but early runs from Rohit and a calculated attack from Rahul at the end gave India’s scratchy pursuit enough to take them over the line. “The last two shots that we played…
doesn’t look well,” Gill later admitted. “If we would have lost this match by DLS, four or five runs, it would have definitely been a stinker for us.”
