Tom Latham: New Zealand cricket’s new Mr Consistent

New Zealand batsman Ross Taylor believes his exhausted side can lift themselves one more time and create history in the fifth and final one-day worldwide against India. “I don’t think there was anything wrong in it”, Dhoni said. “But it was only halfway point and we needed to do a job”.

He also hailed Dhoni for his instinctive flick to run out Ross Taylor.

Ajinkya Rahane (57) and Virat Kohli (45) gave India a fluent start but their modest 261-run chase went horribly wrong after the hosts folded for 241 in 48.4 overs despite being 128-2 at one stage.

But what should be a major concern for the Indian team is the poor run of opener Rohit Sharma, who has scores 14, 15, 13 and 11 in the series so far.

Kohli dominated his stay at the crease with two fours and a six before his innings was cut short by leg-spinner Ish Sodhi who got the star batsman caught behind. This was his first half century in over a year and it came from an unusually high batting position of 4. India are unlikely to tinker with the side too much otherwise.

Dhoni looked under pressure and struggled to time the ball on the hard pitch before being cleaned up by Neesham in the next over.

Pandey and Pandya got out to catches in the outfield while Jadhav was done in by a straighter and lower one from Tim Southee. The series now moves to its final round, at the Visakhapatnam for the final ODI, where India and New Zealand have a chance to clinch it in their favour. The promotion of Axar Patel failed to deliver any decisive progress from there. But the moment Rohit departed with India needing 34 from 23 balls, Dhoni struggled.

Their last win has been against Sri Lanka, a 5-0 whitewash way back in November-2014 and an under-fire Dhoni would not want another series loss at the fag end of his career. But we kept losing them regularly.

Axar Patel (38) and Dhawal Kulkarni (25) did try but that was never going to be enough for the “Men In Blue”.

“Coming here, we had to decide between dew that may or may not come in versus the deterioration”. What the finishers of the past, named above, benefitted from was a crack opening pair in either Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly or Ganguly and Sehwag, or Sehwag and Tendulkar, who invariably got the team off to sublime starts.

He was dropped twice by Mishra, first at mid-on off Umesh Yadav in the seventh over, and then at long off in the 23rd off Jadhav.

“Let us just enjoy a guy who is on top of his game and he is entertaining crowds all over the world and performing day in and day out”. New Zealand ended the first powerplay at 80 for naught.

Williamson then chose to reintroduce Southee to the attack, which proved to be a master stroke. “We wanted to build partnerships through the innings but it wasn’t an easy surface to bat on”. But we were always confident to defend 260. “The bowling effort was outstanding”.