Has Team India failed to drive home the advantage at stumps on day 3?

Team India will be under pressure to force the issue tomorrow morning

Sundays are not proving to be ‘fun days’ for Team India and it’s ardent supporters. A week back, Team India failed to capitalize on a golden opportunity to create history by not only chasing a record score of 407 to win a Test match, but didn’t play well enough to engineer a mammoth run chase, which was constructed beautifully up until the collapse began.

And come the third day of the 2nd Test match of the series, Team India were seemingly bossing the game when New Zealand were reeling at 94-5 at one stage, but as has been the case with Team India lately, Dhoni’s devils were profligate in not driving home the advantage, and maybe closing in on a sumptuous series levelling win. With still 180 overs to be played in the Test match, is it too early to press the panic button from an Indian perspective, or have New Zealand clawed their way back into the game having wiped off a deficit of 246 with 5 wickets still remaining?

At the departure of Corey Anderson and with New Zealand at 94-5, trailing India by a further 152, most cricket savvies would have felt that Dhoni’s men were pretty close to winning their 1st overseas Test match in 3 years even on the third day itself. But that’s when Brendon McCullum and BJ Watling joined together and stemmed the rapid fall of wickets right from the start of the day’s play.

Both the batsmen were rather diligent and hardly gave Team India’s bowling attack a smidgen chance to break their rock solid defence. McCullum adopted a rather sedate approach and was willing to grind it out for his nation, and deny India a smooth sailing ride. B J Watling complemented his captain very well, and played his role in the partnership to perfection.

The Indian bowling attack lead by Zaheer Khan with 3 crucial wickets, which had created all sorts of problems for the New Zealand batsmen up until then, was tiring and slowly ran out of options. Tiredness was telling on the faces of all the 3 Indian quickies, and to add insult to injury, the deck had suddenly become flat and benign. Albeit New Zealand mustered out a meager 59 runs in the middle session for the loss of Anderson, McCullum and Watling had kept the Indian bowlers at bay for close to 27 overs in the session.

The third session was always going to be tough for the Indian bowlers to remain patient and keep looking out for wickets, but you had to admit that the Indian pace bowling trio was culpable for the way they bowled in the post-lunch and tea sessions. They shortened the length from what they were achieving in the morning session, and both McCullum and Watling were grateful to sit back and manipulate the lines and lengths of the Indian fast bowlers.

Having grown up playing on bouncy pitches, it was never going to be eccentric for either of these two batsmen to play comfortably off the back foot, but they made sure that they didn’t give the Indian bowlers any real inspiration with some lose play.

The Indian bowlers for their part went past the outside edge of both the batsmen on a couple of occasions, but nothing was alarming. Dhoni tried to rotate his fast bowlers from one end, and hence let Jadeja bottle one end up with his quick left-arm spinners.

The third day wicket at the Basin Reserve didn’t have any demons in it, and Jadeja had no choice but to bowl from over the wicket and adopt a negative line of attack. Field set became sporadic, and for McCullum particularly, Dhoni didn’t offer any slip fielders for most part of the second and third session of play on the day.

Albeit it was a mix of the benign nature of the surface, and some stern kiwi resistance that has set up the match as it stands at stumps on day 3, you’d have to say that it was Team India and Dhoni’s blemish to not pressurize the duo of Watling and McCullum enough to find a wicket from somewhere.

The big question is whether Team India have once again failed to capitalize on the impetus that they’ve gained time and time again throughout the tour of New Zealand, only to have squandered it repeatedly.

Dhoni and Team India’s ardent fanatics would be hoping that a couple of quick wickets on day 4 will tilt the game in India’s favor once again, but you can’t rule out a counter punch from McCullum, which, if it comes off could have a massive say on how this Test match and series pans out. Remember, there’s still two days of cricket to be played.

Be diligent Team India and Dhoni!