Pune: The Indian team face the rare prospect of a series defeat at home as they take on a high-spirited New Zealand side in the second ODI of the three-match series in Pune on Wednesday.
In the first match, India survived some early jitters with the bat and led by the charismatic Virat Kohli (who notched up his 31st ODI ton in his 200th 50-over match) the hosts reached to a decent 280/8 in their innings. New Zealand on the other hand, packed a solid punch when openers Martin Guptill and Colin Munro gave them a decent start but the main highlight of the chase was the 200-run stand between Tom Latham and Ross Taylor which took the game away completely from the Indians as they made the total look like a joke at the end.
The duo played the spinners with ease and even handled Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Jasprit Bumrah without relative difficulty to take New Zealand 1-0 up in the series, unexpectedly.
But India would want to forget the disaster that happened at the Wankhede few days ago. Instead they would want to focus entirely on the game at hand and claw back into the series and for them to do that, the batting needs to click as a unit. Openers Rohit Sharma and Shikhar Dhawan fell cheaply in the first match to give the Kiwis a fantastic start and the middle order has to chip in with some meaningful contributions. The likes of Dinesh Karthik, MS Dhoni and Kedar Jadhav got starts in the match but couldn’t convert them into a big score as skipper Kohli fought a lone battle at the other end.
The Indians thus would be desperate to win one back and level things up in the series and they are most likely to do it when the entire team performs as a collective unit while the Kiwis would be high on confidence after the thumping enemy. Kedar Jadhav or Dinesh Karthik is expected to make way for Manish Pandey for the number four position in the batting order.