Washington Sundar took all his seven wickets bowling from the same end in his comeback Test. In an instance not too common, all 10 New Zealand wickets, too, fell at the same pavilion end on the opening day of the second Test in Pune.
Courtesy Sundar’s 7/59, India are back in the game, limiting New Zealand to 259 in their first innings even after the visitors were strongly placed at 197/3 late in Thursday’s post-lunch session.
Earlier, Ravichandran Ashwin too took three wickets to eclipse Australian counterpart Nathan Lyon in the number of Test wickets.
The day didn’t end too well for India, though, as they have already lost captain Rohit Sharma to a jaffa from the experienced Tim Southee. Reaching 16/1 at stumps, India are still 243 behind.
If they are to take a healthy lead, Yashasvi Jaiswal and Shubman Gill have to ensure they resume well on Friday, especially as batting against spinners when they are bowling from that pavilion end isn’t very easy. Besides Sundar’s seven wickets and Ashwin’s three on Thursday, Black Caps’ left-arm spinner Ajaz Patel too troubled Gill a
little in the day’s final over.
So, considering the nature of the pitch, the job may not be too easy for this Indian batting line-up. “It’s going to be exciting. Hopefully, we can put a lot of runs on the board,” Sundar said later.
“We genuinely felt it would start spinning from Day 1. It did spin in the first session, but I don’t think it did a lot in the second. The pitch settled down from the third session but eventually, it did spin,” the 25-year-old said about the Pune surface.
Sundar is also a capable batter, and India will be hoping he makes a decent contribution with the bat too in the circumstances. A big task lay ahead of the Tamil Nadu cricketer as he came in place of chinaman bowler Kuldeep Yadav. With the ball, he has got full marks for now. And if he delivers with the bat too, he could well be a contender for a place in India’s squad for the Australia tour.
“That (Test selection) has always been a self-talk for me because I’ve always wanted to figure out things which would help me to get better and keep evolving as a cricketer. That is the only thing I’ve been focusing on in the last few years and I am grateful to be able to experience these kinds of situations,” Sundar said.
Bowling alongside Ashwin and (wicketless) Ravindra Jadeja also was of big help for Sundar. “We communicated a lot and they brought in a lot of qualities, skill-sets and experience. That’s really helpful for someone who’s playing along with them.”
