New Zealand vs India 2020, 2nd ODI: Injury troubles compel coach Luke Ronchi to field for the home side 

What's the story?

Lack of substitute fielders forced New Zealand to send their fielding coach, Luke Ronchi out in the middle to field for the home team in the second ODI of the ongoing three-match series against India. The Kiwis had to take this decision since the rest of the substitutes were not fit to take the field.

The background

Prior to the ODI series, skipper Kane Williamson had been ruled out of the first two games with an injury. On the eve of the second game, fast bowler Scott Kuggeleijn picked up a flu while on the day of the match, the lone substitute player, Mitchell Santner got a stomach bug hence, he was not available to play.

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The heart of the matter

Luke Ronchi, who last played a game for New Zealand way back in 2017, joined the backroom staff as the fielding coach after retirement. New Zealand batted first in the second ODI and the heroics of Ross Taylor helped them post a decent score of 273 runs on the board.

Chasing 274 runs to level the series, India got off to a shaky start as the top order could not make much impact. Shreyas Iyer steadied the boat with a half-century while Ravindra Jadeja took the game into the final overs. But, during the 37th over of the Indian innings, the Blackcaps surprised everyone by sending out their fielding coach, Ronchi to play the role of a substitute fielder.

Luke Ronchi, the assistant coach, is Substitute players#NZ VS IND pic.twitter.com/1Uk9F5WZvT

— Muhammad Noman (@Nomancricket29) February 8, 2020

What's next?

Despite the unavailability of their marquee players, New Zealand have now taken an unassailable lead of 2-0 in the ODI series. It will be intriguing to see if the Kiwis could avenge their T20I series loss by inflicting a whitewash on the visitors in the 50-overs series.