Image: Abhishek Sharma in the match against New Zealand / © X (Twitter)
A 3-0 lead with two matches to go, courtesy two players who aren’t even in India’s current starting eleven, is as commanding an assignment for any Indian side preparing to retain their world championship at home. That’s when this current ODI series win run began, before that aforementioned World Cup two years ago.
Harshit Rana took one wicket in the first over, Bumrah sent the off stump flying with the first ball, while Kishan and Abhishek scored many boundaries off the first overs despite the golden duck for Samson on a night that India dominated their Test and ODI opponents.
Abhishek went on to score the second-quickest half-century of the tournament, reaching it in just 14 deliveries, thereby mocking New Zealand’s plan of targeting the pads of Abhishek and taking away room to score runs from that region. Though not as spectacular an innings as that of Abhishek, Suryakumar went on to continue his run of scoring runs with an unbeaten 57 off 26 deliveries.
Mitchell Santner’s tongue-in-cheek comment after the last match may have been just that when he said you need 300 against “these guys”. Devon Conway wanted to start accordingly, even though he’d been dismissed four times in four innings by Rana on tour thus far. All he managed to do was mis-hit to mid-off off an on-pace ball. Hardik Pandya took an excellent overhead catch at mid-off, and in the next over, Pandya created an easier opportunity for Bishnoi with a short ball to Rachin Ravindra.
Any reservations that New Zealand may have had regarding the inadequacy of their total due to the wicket that resulted from the first-ball delivery to Samson would have been forgotten due to the blinding speed of Kishan’s bats, which resulted in Matt Henry being dismissed for 6, 6, and 4 after getting one boundary off. Almost as if offended that someone was upstaging him, even before he was due to strike, Abhishek charged off to Jacob Duffy, who followed him, but still got him over midwicket.
Abhishek followed it up with two fours. He and Kishan added 53 in 19 balls, with Kishan eventually falling to a flipper from Ish Sodhi.
As Kishan got out for 28 off 13 deliveries, Abhishek was already on 23 off six. Every bowler tried their best to bowl outside leg to Abhishek, and Abhishek just attacked every bowler and backed away to go inside the off side. When Abhishek got inside the line of one and pulled the ball over fine leg for six – just for variation – Abhishek had already got his fifty inside the power play.
Abhishek fell two balls short of his cricketing icon and mentor, Yuvraj Singh’s record. India were also one run shy of their top powerplay score at 94 for two.
Suryakumar was in complete dominance in the hitting and the strike post powerplay as New Zealand looked for non-existent answers. He played the signature flick over backward square leg but was equally adept at the back cut. The last piece in a dominant team fell in place.