New Zealand climb cricket's toughest mountain
"How do you beat India at home?"
That's the question I've been asking for about a year and a half on this site. Analysts from various teams around the world have contacted me occasionally and asked if I have any thoughts. The issue, of course, is that they have so many of the world's best spinners, who can also bat. It means they have this batting order that never ends.
Even if you do manage to occasionally get rid of their top order, maybe even more than occasionally, they still make extra runs all the way through. If it's a flat pitch, they have the world's best flat pitch seamer and their batters make a ton of runs. Plus, they have many high-skilled spin and pace bowling options available to them at all times.
And they have batting styles now, and of the future, that are overlapping. Not to mention that they decided a few years ago that they were going to make pitches that were going to accentuate their strengths of just spinning the ball as much as possible.
The truth is that for 18 series and 4331 days, no one really had any answers to this. It was a fair and valid question. They had more home wins in a row than the great Australia and West Indies sides ever managed. It was absolutely incredible.
And when we all used our collective brain power to wonder how a team would actually beat India at home, not a single one of us thought that it would be Tim Southee outscoring India in the first innings and Mitchell Santner taking 13 wickets in a match to outbowl Ashwin and Jadeja.
In the history of cricket, there are not many bigger upsets than what we have seen. In a lifetime of punching above their weight, the Kiwis just jumped up into the sky and punched a star.
All I could think about today while watching New Zealand absolutely pummel India—in conditions where there was a little bit in the wicket for spinners—is that Bangladesh has a side that is actually better set up to come over and beat India in India on this kind of wickets.
They have allround talent, five genuine frontline bowlers to choose from, and batters who can play spin. There are some weaknesses as well, but they also had some good pace bowling. By the last Test, people were saying Bangladesh should never come to India again. India produced a result in a way that we've never really seen any team do before.
If you look at both teams on paper, there is no doubt which one is better at playing and bowling spin. Yet, none of it mattered. Bangladesh were horrible, while New Zealand have already won this series.
What about some of the other circumstances? New Zealand decided to make this an Asian tour. They were going to play Afghanistan in India, go to Sri Lanka, and then hopefully by then they'd be a lot better for when they were playing against India.
An ounce of rain seemed to flood the ground for days in Noida. They were in the game in the first Test against Sri Lanka, but the hosts completely overwhelmed them in the next match.
How would anyone in the world think that New Zealand had a chance in India? Look at all the things that were stacked up against them.
Kane Williamson did not play either of the two Tests. He is undoubtedly the greatest batter that New Zealand have ever produced. The rest of their batting has been pretty poor over the last couple of years, and he has been absolutely incredible. You would think that he would be very important in India, but New Zealand absolutely did not need their greatest batter ever to win.
Tim Southee is a fantastic bowler. He is someone who can specifically take advantage of the SG balls when they swing early on. But his recent form was bad, and people were saying he shouldn't even be in the team anymore. He also gave up the captaincy.
Tom Latham also hasn't made a lot of runs of recent times and was suddenly made captain. Think about all the planning New Zealand had done for this series. After they lost in Sri Lanka, they just had to give the captaincy to another player who wasn't in great form himself.
But those weren't the only form issues. Devon Conway burst onto the Test cricket scene like a shining star, but over the last couple of years, he hasn’t shone as brightly or been as much of a star.
We all know how good Rachin Ravindra can and should be, but he hadn't done much in Test cricket other than a very big innings against South Africa when they did not have their first-choice team.
Daryl Mitchell and Tom Blundell were also starring for a couple of years, and they've both just gone into huge form funks.
Bowling has been their strength over the last couple of years. But Tim Southee lost form. Trent Boult does not have a central contract. Neil Wagner had retired. We haven't seen Kyle Jamieson in a while. Ben Sears, who wasn't here either, is supposed to be really good. They didn't even have all their options available to them.
They lost the toss in the first Test. Tom Latham said he was going to have a bat if they won. Everything went their way since. Will O'Rourke was really exciting, but we weren't quite sure how his bowling was going to translate to Indian conditions. Tim Southee was in a slump. Matt Henry has never played three Tests in a row in his entire career.
All the seamers bowl brilliantly, and they win that Test—even though India comeback in the third innings. And who makes the runs? Conway and Ravindra. Again, not many could have seen that coming. But the conditions did go in their favor and they got hugely ahead of that game. Even though India came close to being ahead, New Zealand fought their way back and played very well.
What happens for the next Test? Matt Henry is not available. Michael Bracewell—the most logical choice to bring in as their second spinner—is on a paternity leave. They're going to go to Pune next, and everyone knows it's going to spin there. We remember the Steve O'Keefe match.
That's okay, because they have Ajaz Patel. He took all 10 wickets in an innings the last time he came to India. In two Tests so far, he has four. Their second-best spinner is a former wicketkeeper who just bowls because he wants to be involved in everything.
How do you win in Pune if Ajaz Patel isn't taking any wickets and you have to rely way too much on Glenn Phillips? You come from a nation where you've never really made that many runs against the spinning ball, or taken that many wickets bowling it.
New Zealand had won only two Tests in India in history. Of the most established sides in world cricket, you would have to say that New Zealand is by far and away the worst when it comes to Asian conditions. They've just never had the right team for that.
And Pune is quintessential Asian conditions. They're trying to do that with Ajaz Patel, who seems incredibly low on confidence, and Glenn Phillips, who has too much confidence—but maybe that is going to get him a couple of wickets.
Of course, they could take something from that first Test. But we do know that India lose first Tests and the conditions were in New Zealand's favour—which was not the case in Pune.
The spinner that they choose is Mitchell Santner. You will hear a lot about how he averaged 42 in Test cricket before this match. It is very important to remember that he also averaged 42 in first-class cricket. Before this, Mitch Santner had not had success with the red ball.
He had 54 wickets in Test cricket before, and he has ended up with 13 wickets. 13 wickets. A man who has never shown any inkling that this was about to happen. He has experience, has travelled around the world, and his prime has been around for four years. We know specifically how bad he has been in Asia.
And Mitchell Santner just drops 13 wickets on India, along with a run-out, which helps New Zealand take 20 wickets. He has ended up with more wickets in this match than Ashwin and Jadeja combined in two Tests.
And it gets even weirder when you think about India, because they dropped Kuldeep Yadav and overlooked Axar Patel. They brought in someone else who was more of a risk, and he put in a Player of the Match performance. Yet, they lost the game. The pitch spun consistently, all the way through. It helped tall spinners specifically—India had two, while New Zealand only had one.
Mitch Santner took almost all of New Zealand's most crucial wickets. Ashwin and Jadeja could not. Washington played well above what anyone would have ever imagined. I don't know what to do with any of this. It's completely and utterly bizarre.
I study the history of cricket, and look at what's happened recently. There have been so many incredible upsets. West Indies versus England in the women's T20 World Cup almost isn't mentioned anymore. South Africa were absolutely incredible versus Australia in the semi-final of the same tournament. Bangladesh men against Pakistan, what an occasion for cricket that was.
What about Pakistan's series win on the same day? Pakistan were obliterated off the face of the map in the first Test match. Yet, they have come back and played one of the great comeback series we have ever seen in Test cricket. And no one cares, because it's barely a blip compared to what New Zealand did against the team who has been winning consistently at home for 4000 days.
And you go through the history of our game and you start to look for the best upsets of all time. Sri Lanka's wins in South Africa in 2019, and in England in 2014 come to mind. I think they're both brilliant, but I'm not sure they're better than this. In part, because they weren't playing a team of this quality. Even if India didn't play up to their best, you still had to beat India.
I go back to India in England in 1971, when India had their first ever win in England. I don't know how to map all these things, but we have quite often seen massive upsets in one-off games.
Imagine being around during the reigns of Australia or the West Indies. It would have been unimaginable for a team in transition—a team that had won only eight of their last 23 matches, and was missing their best batter, a first-choice spinner, and a key bowler who was unfit for the second Test—to simply walk into a fortress and claim victory over such dominant sides in back-to-back Test matches.
There's no way we can even comprehend that. And that is what New Zealand have done. They are nowhere near the best team in world cricket anymore. They are a side barely holding on since the World Test Championship victory. Yet, they come out and they do this. The thing that no other teams could do. It's ludicrous.
Of course, it makes me think about the most important wins in New Zealand history. Forget the best upsets, but just the ones that really matter. You've got their first Test series away from home in Pakistan, back in 1969. You've got the recent women's T20 World Cup and the women's ODI World Cup in 2000. And then this. At the moment, I do not know how to rank any of those, because I've still got Mitchell Santner taking wickets in my head.
I've just gone through the most important moments in New Zealand cricket history, and two of them have come in a week. Both with teams who looked completely done, toasted, washed. The women's team was losing again and again. It did not look like a side that can win the tournament. The men's team went from losing in Sri Lanka to smashing India.
New Zealand beat the world and India within a week. And honestly, I still don't know how.
So, how do you beat India in India? Imagine the template being Tim Southee making runs and Mitch Santner taking wickets. You know, there was a narrative for a long time that India always choked in the big moments and under pressure. Well, this series wasn't that, right? No one had this as even a remote possibility of happening.
When it comes down to it, this series wasn't supposed to be remembered in history. We did not expect to have a Test that we remembered as the Mitch Santner Test. We were not supposed to have a match where India were 350 runs down after a single innings.
I suppose if you think about the history of New Zealand cricket, it is rising up as a collective and punching a bigger team in the mouth. Well, in this case, you don't get much bigger than India in India.
