Santner finished with career-best figures of 4-11 off his four overs
Image courtesy of: ESPNcricinfo
India’s World Twenty20 campaign got off to an embarrassing start as New Zealand spinner Mitchell Santner sliced through their batting line-up to help his side crush them by 47 runs in Nagpur.
Having come into the tournament following a successful Asia Cup campaign, India, who are considered one of the favourites to win the World Twenty20, failed to dazzle with the bat, leading to them being humbled in front of their own fans.
However, India did look to be on top after New Zealand captain Kane Williamson opted to bat as they reduced the Black Caps to 35/3.
New Zealand were never able to fully recover from their poor start and they continued to lose wickets at regular intervals throughout their innings.
However, they managed to score 126/7 off their 20 overs thanks to all-rounder Corey Anderson’s solid knock of 34 and wicketkeeper Luke Ronchi’s quickfire 21 towards the end of the innings.
Ravichandran Ashwin, Jasprit Bumrah, Ashish Nehra, Suresh Raina and Ravindra Jadeja picked up one wicket apiece.
Chasing 127 to win, India never got out of the starting blocks as only three of their batsmen – captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Virat Kohli and Ashwin – managed to reach double figures. Dhoni was India’s top-scorer with 30 runs, while Kohli made 23. Ashwin meanwhile added 10 runs.
With all the other batsmen failing to have an impact whatsoever and Santner ripping through their line-up, India were bundled out for 79, which is their second-lowest total in Twenty20 International history.
Santner was the most successful bowler with four wickets, while Ish Sodhi snapped up three, Nathan McCullum took two and Adam Milne claimed one.
Dhoni was less than impressed with his side’s performance, and said: “I think it was a low scoring wicket, I thought we restricted them to a good total, the batting let us down, the shot selection kept putting pressure on the batsmen coming in. They bowled well, exploited the conditions, but we lacked adaptability, we could have applied ourselves a little more. The batting let us down.”
Williamson was thrilled to have started the tournament on a high, and said: “Very pleased, tough surface, with the bat whatever score was going to be tough, we would have liked to have a few more. We wanted to be aggressive at the start, the format dictates that, we may reflect on that though and try and do it better. (On selection) that’s tough, they are world class bowlers, but we had to look at the conditions and it came off today. The message to the bowling attack, we knew the best way to take wickets was to be patient and apply pressure and we did that well.”
Santner was named Man of the Match, and said: “There was a bit of spin out there, they bowled well to keep us to 120, that was below par, but we got stuck in and I’m delighted with the win. Jadeja was really spinning it, starting was hard, trying to get to 130 140 but in the end 126 proved to be enough.”