India skipper MS Dhoni continued his love affair with the toss on Valentines day, calling correctly again and asking New Zealand to bat on the first day of the second Test at the Basin Reserve, Wellington on Friday.
In fact, with this toss, Dhoni has won all seven of his tosses in New Zealand so far which comprises five in the One Day international series (New Zealand won that 4-0 with one-match tied) and the first test at Auckland which also New Zealand won by 40 runs. In last 12 matches the India captain has won the toss in 11 times.
Coming on to the match itself now where MS Dhoni is staring at his dismal overseas record and probably would be wondering what he needs to do to turn that around. India has not won an overseas test since June 2011. They, though, have a chance to set the record straight against New Zealand. Agreed, this is a young Indian team and are still finding its feet with the combined Test matches of all players lesser than experience of captain who has played 86 Tests. The near victory in the previous match at Auckland when the visitors nearly managed to chase a 400 target could instill lot of confidence on these young turks. The positive for MS Dhoni and CO. will be that this young Indian batting line up does not buckle under pressure and is not afraid of any daunting task put in front of them.
The bowlers, on the other hand, also need to provide a good start so that the batsmen can play their natural game. Mohammed Shami must be high on confidence after the previous Test and Zaheer Khan must rejuvenate himself for challenges and increase his pace as well. No opposition can be troubled by a medium pacer bowling in 120’s (kph). The batsmen need to back each other to score big. It’s high time the skipper leads the way in an overseas Test match.
On the other hand everything looks rosy for the kiwis. Their batsmen are in form and their bowlers hunt in packs and the pitch at Wellington would be more conducive to seam bowling.
The Indian team looks unlikely for any changes , whereas the kiwis may hand their debut to Tim Lotham and bring in Jimmy Neesham.
At Luch, though, India made most of winning the toss and put Kiwis in dire straits at 51/4.
For India, Ishant Sharma, was the pick of the bowlers with three wickets, while Shami took the fourth wicket of the Kiwi innings to fall before Lunch on day1 of Welling ton Test match.
