Mumbai: India maintained the strangle hold over New Zealand as India’s profilic spinner Ravichandran Ashwin picked up six wickets for 81 runs, cleaning up the visitor’s innings on 299 runs just 40 minutes before end of day’s on Monday.
India gained a healthy first-innings lead of 258 runs at the end of third day’s play at the Holkar stadium thus inching closer to a whitewash over New Zealand.
Ravichandran Ashwin’s excellent figures of 6/81 has put India in a commanding position, Virat Kohli, however, did not enforce follow-on on the visitors and India was 18/0 at stumps thus increasing their overall lead to 276 runs.
Opener Gautam Gambhir was retired hurt at six as he sustained a shoulder injury while running for a second run. Cheteshwar Pujara (1*) and Murali Vijay (11*) held the fort for India at stumps.
It was, however, Ashwin’s day, who attacked from the Pavillion end to reach to his 20th five wicket haul in 39 innings. He crossed Ishant Sharma in the Indian test bowler’s list of wicket-takers.
Ashwin who’s in great form has picked up 14 wickets in his last two test matches. He ran out two batsmen of his own bowling besides picking up six wickets thus accounting for a total of eight wickets. The remaining two wickets were plucked by his spin partner Ravindra Jadeja.
With only two days left in the game, India clearly stand a chance of winning it. After the massive partnership between Virat Kohli (211) and Ajinkya Rahane (188), Ashwin also stepped up the gears to strike leaving New Zealand to tatters.
New Zealand, at a moment, was cruising towards its target as their opening partnership accounted for 118 runs. Ashwin came back with a sensational spell to pick up four wickets.
Ashwin got rid of Latham (53) to break the opening partnership just before lunch and then got the Kiwi skipper Kane Williamson (8).
It was insult to injury after he dismissed Ross Taylor and Luke Ronchi for a duck destroying the Kiwi top-order, a collapse they could not recover from. He also run out set batsman Martin Guptill (72) leaving the visitors struggling at 148/5. He dismissed Guptill and Jeetan Patel by deflecting the ball onto the stumps as both batsmen were found out of their crease.
New Zealand partially recovered after the quick fall of wickets as Neesham and Watling fought back to help their team’s score reach 200 run mark. Ashwin got rid of persistent James Neesham (71) to provide India a breather.
Jadeja came into play breaking the sixth wicket partnership that lasted for 53 runs between Neesham and Watling.
Jadeja came into replace Ashwin and bowled brilliantly picking up Watling who was caught by Ajinkya Rahane, who caught his third catch of the innings adding to his brilliant knock of 188 runs. Jadeja claimed 2/80, more importantly, breaking two 50 run partnerships down the bottom order of the New Zealand innings and provided great support to R Ashwin.