Vizag: A fantastic bowling by Amit Mishra's (5/18) helped India beat New Zealand by 190 runs in the fifth ODI and clinch the five-match series 3-2 at Vizag on Saturday.
In all praise for Mishra, Indian skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni said that Mishra's beauty was that he bowled slow, and as a keeper you have time to recover the ball to stump batsmen. “It was one of the best performances by the bowlers. This was one game where the spinners bowled with a lot of assistance. Before this when we bowled first, the wicket was always better to bat in the first half. Exceptional performance in this game, there was a bit of dew. But the pace the spinners bowled was perfect,” said Dhoni, adding, “Mishra's beauty is he bowls slow, so as a keeper you have time to recover the ball to stump batsmen. And in tandem with Axar, who bowls flat and quick, it was very good.”
“I think Virat was superb with the bat, we got off to a decent start. When Rohit got injured, the message was if you think you can't carry on, just play your shots. Once he got out, he gave us some momentum. We felt it was a difficult wicket to freely rotate. That's when we decided to play the big shots. We felt 270 was par-plus but considering the dew factor that was necessary. Glad we could rest some key players, with some big Test series coming up. I am happy with our performance. I feel the batsmen down the order, like Kedar Jadhav, Axar Patel and Manish Pandey gained a lot of experience. It is difficult to get the complete product in international cricket. So the new players should be given time to develop. There are few ways to approach the game. The IPL way, you keep hitting and chase down but in international arena, you fail and that's when you become more calculative. It's not necessary to win in 40 overs. You can do so in 50 as well.”
Meanwhile, New Zealand skipper Kane Williamson said, “Without a doubt the total was a lot above par. India have played really well throughout the series. It's very hard to look past today's performance for us. You expect to put up a good performance whether we win or lose and today we were terrible.”
“We expect a lot more of our batting, and losing 8 for 20 or whatever it is unacceptable. Playing against one of the best sides in the world, there is room to learn. A lot of comes on the back of losses, so tough lessons. But it's important we take them in. The disappointment is very fresh after a performance like this though. Positives - Test series was extremely tough, coming into this one-day series, after heavy defeats, we fought hard in some tricky surfaces. That was a good effort. We pride ourselves on learning game to game, and today we didn't show that. There was number of individuals who did their reputations good. Someone like Tom Latham with the bat and Mitchell Santner's all round work,” said Williamson.