Pune, Oct 25 Spinners Mitchell Santner and Glenn Phillips picked six wickets between themselves to wreck the star-studded Indian batting line-up and reduce the hosts’ to 107/7 in 38 overs at lunch on day two of second Test against New Zealand at the MCA Stadium on Friday.
Resuming from 16/1, India were primed to bat all day in order to maintain their upper hand over New Zealand. But a combination of Santner being stunning by varying his pace, flight and dip by bowling 14 overs on the trot from the commentary box end, along with rash shot selection and lack of gumption from the batters has resulted in India being in serious trouble.
They still trail New Zealand by 152 runs, after losing six wickets for 91 runs in the first session, and will depend a lot on Ravindra Jadeja (11 not out) and Washington Sundar (two not out) to bail them out of trouble.
In the morning, Shubman Gill and Jaiswal started well with a 49-run stand for the second wicket. But once Gill was trapped lbw by a quicker delivery from Santner, the wickets started tumbling for India.
The crowd at Pune was stunned into silence when Virat Kohli went for a pre-mediated slog-sweep off Santner, but he missed the low full toss which went below his bat to hit the stumps, leaving the ace batter shell-shocked.
Phillips struck with his first over of part-time off-spin as Yashasvi Jaiswal came forward to defend, but gave an outside edge to first slip. Rishabh Pant was next to fall, after his pre-mediated pull off Phillips went past his bat to hit the stumps.
With chance to play sweep shot blocked, Sarfaraz Khan aimed to go inside-out against Santner, but miscued the shot to mid-off. Santner had another moment of absolute joy when he trapped Ravichandran Ashwin lbw with a quicker delivery and cap off a brilliant session for New Zealand to leave India in disarray yet again.
Brief Scores: New Zealand 259 in 79.1 overs lead India 107/7 in 38 overs (Yashasvi Jaiswal 30, Shubman Gill 30; Mitchell Santner 4-36, Glenn Phillips 2-26) by 152 runs
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