Which New Zealand cricketer who hasn’t really played much recently will absolutely destroy India in the third Test?

2 minute read

After 18 home series victories in a row, India have been beaten by New Zealand. The tourists achieved this seemingly-impossible feat exactly how you’d imagine – by plopping cricketers who haven’t really been playing much into their team and asking them to immediately decimate India’s batting line-up.

If you’re not aware of the background to this series from the New Zealand perspective, they’d just toured Sri Lanka, playing two Tests and losing both. In the second one they were bowled out for 88 on a pitch where they’d just conceded 602-5.

“Well, pretty hard to improve on that as preparation for a Test series against India,” they concluded and so went into this series without any warm-up games.

Perhaps concerned that some of their players might nevertheless be overcooked after playing Test cricket three weeks earlier, they picked Matt Henry, who hadn’t featured in Sri Lanka, for the first Test. He responded by taking 5-15 as India were bowled out for 46.

“Say, this ‘picking people who haven’t been playing’ thing seems to work quite well,” concluded the Kiwis and duly dropped Henry for the second Test. They replaced him with Mitchell Santner, who was on a bit of a hot streak after taking one wicket for 197 runs in Sri Lanka and who had caught the eye with some seriously proficient drinks-carrying during the first Test.

Santner took 7-53 in the first innings and 6-104 in the second and India’s proud home record was gone before the third and final Test had even begun.

So who’s going to be the key player in Mumbai on Friday? Ish Sodhi hasn’t played a Test in almost two years, so he must be worth watching. However, our money’s on Jacob Duffy on the basis he’s never played one at all.

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