Sehwag Shuffles New Zealand in Starts

Hamilton: Virender Sehwag took the attack back to the opposition and took the NZ bowlers to the sword from the word go bringing up India’s 50 in the 8th over. Sehwag also brought up his 50 and set up a solid base with Gambhir for the middle order to follow.

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In the death of the NZ innings, Peter McGlashan went all guns blazing and notched up his half century to up the tempo for New Zealand and put them in a competitive position. He scored 56 off just 32 deliveries and put up a 95 run partnership with Eliott who scored 35 off 27 balls. The duo stepped on the gas and freed their arms to end the NZ innings at 271/5 in 47 overs.

The revised target for India is 281 runs in 47 overs which is just about 6 runs an over.

Rain had played spoilsport again in the fourth ODI at Hamilton and the players had to rush off the field twice. There was no loss of play after the first interruption but after a sudden shower soon after players got back on the ground reduced the game to 47 overs.
Ishant Sharma struck twice in quick succession to put New Zealand on the backfoot after the hosts took off strongly riding on their swashbuckling openers, Ryder and McCullum.

Prior to the onslaught by McGlashan and Eliott, Ishant Sharma had induced an edge off the shoulder of Jacob Oram’s (1) blade and then deceived Martin Guptill (25) with his pace. Guptill was caught by Dinesh Karthik at deep third man.

Zaheer Khan was also rewarded for his brilliant bowling consistently when Brendon McCullum was wrapped on the pads plumb in front of the wickets for 71. He had started off pretty slow but took the charge after setting his eyes in and had pummeled the Indian bowling to all corners of the park.

McCullum’s knock could well be credited to the sloppy effort in the field by the Indian team. He was dropped twice by different fieldsmen but the bowler remained the same - Yuvraj Singh. Dhoni had missed a stumping chance early in the innings and then it was Sehwag who had dropped the batsman off the same bowler. He also took the NZ total past the 150 run mark.

Earlier, after toiling hard for over 19 overs, the Indian team finally got a breakthrough in the form of the explosive Jesse Ryder who was caught by Suresh Raina off Yuvraj Singh. He scored 46.

Soon after that, Ross Taylor perished to Yusuf Pathan when he caught by Rohit Sharma in the deep for 5. Two quick wickets suddenly seem to have put India back in the game after the NZ openers looked like batting India out of the game completely.

New Zealand had got off to a steady start with both their openers Jesse Ryder and Brendon McCullum playing cautiously and aggressively, Ryder in particular. The duo took the team’s total past the 100 run mark in the 18th over.

The Kiwi skipper had won the toss and decided to give his team a chance to bat for the first time in the ODI series. India have batted first on all the three occasions in the ODI series and India have managed to post big totals on the board.

Teams :

India:V Sehwag, G Gambhir, SK Raina, Yuvraj Singh, MS Dhoni, RG Sharma, YK Pathan, P Kumar, Harbhajan Singh, Z Khan, I Sharma

New Zealand: JD Ryder, BB McCullum MJ Guptill, LRPL Taylor, GD Elliott, JDP Oram, PD McGlashan, DL Vettori, KD Mills, EP Thompson, IE O`Brien