If England's win against Australia on Saturday was brutal, New Zealand gave a slow death to the Indian team as their chances of qualification were dealt a body blow in the ongoing ICC Men's T20 World Cup 2021. It was a proper thrashing, borderline humiliation.
The famed batting line-up of the men in blue just collapsed whether it was a lack of clarity in how to approach the innings or whether to save wickets or go from ball one. KL Rahul and Rohit Sharma helped them to almost get through the powerplay after the Indian team had lost their new opener Ishan Kishan in the third over of the innings, but they couldn't as Rahul pulled a short delivery from Tim Southee straight to the fielder at deep square leg.
This just followed a sad and unfortunate trend as either dot balls were lining up or the Indian batters were finding the fielders with a thread-in-needle-like precision. Rohit Sharma after playing a few dot balls tried to hit Ish Sodhi out of the attack and straight to the long-on fielder. Virat Kohli did the same, very uncanny of him as he too holed out at long-on.
Every batter kept coming in and either found himself in a rut or the fielders. Ravindra Jadeja in the end with an unbeaten knock of 26 runs helped India's score go beyond 100, which looked near-impossible at that point, that woeful an innings it was.
111 was never going to be challenging and it just gave the freedom to the openers Martin Guptill and Daryl Mitchell, who just had to be there, run were going to come. They cashed in during the field restrictions and unless they lost 3-4 wickets early, India were never going to come back and they didn't let them.
Mitchell was severe on Indian spinners Jadeja and Varun Chakravarthy as he took them apart. Jasprit Bumrah removed Guptill but then the man made for these situations, skipper Kane Williamson, the ice walked it.
Williamson kept rotating strike, got the occasional boundary and it was only a matter of time before the Kiwis got home. Mitchell fell one short of his half-century but he had done his job and it was a walk in the park for the Blackcaps since then.
New Zealand after losing against Pakistan in their first game got their campaign back on track and now are the favorites to qualify from Group 2 unless Afghanistan has other ideas, apart from Pakistan.
For India, the permutations and combinations will come into play, all that if India win all three remaining games with big margins.
