Support your favourite cricket team and cricketer

Another conquest, another feather in the now burgeoning m.s. dhoni cap. new zealand’s late fight back notwithstanding – due to some startling moves by the captain – india pulled off a rather facile ten-wicket triumph over the hosts and won their first ever test match in New Zealand for almost four decades. And not so surprisingly, it was attributable to a team effort than only a single player’s brilliance; something that has become as commonplace as virender sehwag’s carefree batting. Apart from that, it would be fair to say that the Indians were a far superior side of the two teams, in at least two of the three departments, with the fielding honours shared evenly. The New Zealanders were already in a catch-22 situation with the pitch; a flat track would have clearly played in favour of the Indian batsmen who had pummelled the Kiwis in the ODIs, where as a track with more bounce and grass may have ended up helping the Indian pace bowlers more than the home team. In the end, the toss proved crucial, as after the first couple of hours, the pitch offered very little assistance to the bowlers and whatever it did was negated by some balanced batting by the likes of gautam gambhir, Rahul Dravid and sachin tendulkar. A lot of credit must be given to Tendulkar for his knock, especially after the team was 177/3 at one stage and another wicket here could have made the contest more even. Tendulkar was cautious to begin with, but as time progressed, it was very evident that it would take someone of the prowess of a Hercules to dislodge him and that was proved right. However, a bit of the win was marred by a small controversy that erupted when the Kiwi second inning started with Tim McIntosh edging a zaheer khan delivery in the direction of the first slip. Tendulkar was fielding there and had to dive a little in front to catch it, which he did. However, the replays did show that there was a possibility of the ball touching the ground and the fingers at the same time, thus meaning that the batsman could have been awarded the benefit of doubt. For some reason, it wasn’t referred to the third umpire – where as a previous one of Dhoni had been asked – and the on-field umpires sent the man packing. Personally, even after looking at all the replays, I cannot be sure whether it was out or no. Neither would the third umpire have been, thus ensuring that the benefit of that minute doubt would have gone in the favour of McIntosh. What was most surprising was the reaction of Ravi Shastri, who was commentating at that time. Shastri is one of the best commentators in the world and the one reason for that is his straight-forward, unbiased commentary, and yet, he claimed that there is no doubt that it was out! Later, sitting in the studio, even Arun Lal claimed to have seen something that not many of us saw; a definite out. It left me wondering whether it was a different match that we were watching.