Cricket: Kiwis put India on the back foot

Bad weather has played havoc with the inaugural World Test Championship final but New Zealand holds a hard-fought upper hand.

New Zealand’s Kyle Jamieson celebrates the wicket of Rohit Sharma during Day 2 of the ICC World Test Championship Final at The Hampshire Bowl in Southampton. Picture: Getty Images

Bad weather has played havoc with the inaugural World Test Championship final, obliterating the opening day, curtailing the second and, if the forecast is to be believed, it is in danger of cancelling the scheduled fourth as well.

It has been a real shame because the cricket has been fascinating, with the faster bowlers holding sway in challenging conditions and New Zealand gaining a hard-fought upper hand against their more fancied opponents.

The journey to this final for New Zealand has been powered by a core of highly experienced players, joined more recently by two relative newcomers who have given the team a touch of extra class. One of those is Kyle Jamieson, the 26-year-old fast bowler who releases the ball from the heavens; the other Devon Conway, the cool-as-you-like opener who put England to the sword at Lord’s and has continued his good form since then.

Both have made outstanding starts to their international careers and both made important contributions on the second day of play. Jamieson’s five wickets helped keep India in check after an opening day when their batsmen navigated the trickiest conditions with real determination. Then came Conway, who shared an opening partnership of 70 with Tom Latham to settle nerves, and became the first man on either side to pass 50 in the match — a measure of his excellence and of just how difficult runscoring has been.

The absence of English slow bowlers in the two-match series just completed left us none the wiser about how Conway might play spin but, having negotiated the new ball, he looked at home against Ravichandran Ashwin, whose flight and guile had accounted for Latham, driving uppishly to short cover. When the dark clouds rolled in towards the end of the day, Virat Kohli turned to his seamers again, at which point Conway aimed a flick to leg off Ishant Sharma and holed out at mid-on, moments before the umpires took the players from the field for bad light.

Conway’s late demise gave India a much-needed lift. Both teams will know similar conditions could allow the game to progress at pace and there is a reasonable chance of a result regardless of the weather. So far, New Zealand have looked the more battle-ready team, although there were signs late in the day that Jasprit Bumrah, India’s spearhead, had started to find his best rhythm again, after looking the least dangerous of all the seamers on show initially. Both teams have everything to play for.

After an indifferent start to the match, when some early nerves from the established new-ball pair of Trent Boult and Tim Southee were apparent, New Zealand came back strongly. Their swing bowlers have found more movement than India’s predominantly seam-based attack, and they were backed up by more excellent slip catching. If India’s first-innings score of 217 was slightly below par in the circumstances, that was only because they had negotiated the opening day so well.

Looming down at the batsmen from six-foot plenty, Jamieson had helped wrest back control for New Zealand after the nervy beginning had allowed Rohit Sharma and Shubman Gill to give India the kind of head start no team had a right to expect in such treacherous conditions. As well as the wicket of Sharma, Jamieson had offered the greatest control and that was why Kane Williamson, the captain, opted for him over Southee at the start of play.

Kohli and his deputy, Ajinkya Rahane, were out in the middle before the umpires and the New Zealand team, as if they meant business as play loomed. The day marked the tenth anniversary of Kohli’s start in Test cricket, a decade in which there has been as profound a change in the game as any other, as T20 cricket and the domestic franchises that power it have risen to the fore. Kohli has been in the vanguard of that, but he has also been the Test game’s staunchest defender.

Accordingly, he would have loved to mark it with a score, but it was not to be. Story goes that during the last edition of the Indian Premier League, Jamieson was asked by Kohli (they play together for the same franchise) if he wouldn’t mind bowling at him in the nets with a Dukes ball, a question the India captain was within his rights to ask and one the New Zealander was within his rights to refuse, which he did.

When the battle did come, it was a good one, with Kohli surviving the first day, showing great judgment and grit, but falling leg-before to a full-length nip-backer early on the second, without adding to his score.

Kohli was one of four wickets to fall in the morning session as the ball continued to move extravagantly under heavy cloud cover. Rahane coped best of all, as befits one of the few India batsmen who has a stronger record overseas than he does at home. He looked cool and unflustered in making 49, before suckered into scooping a short ball from Neil Wagner to square leg. The shift to the ploy had been signalled only the ball before, following a flap at a short ball, so this was a gift of a wicket.

That conditions were as extreme, perhaps, to Indian eyes, as the spinning pitches were in Ahmedabad to English, was reflected in Pant’s 22-ball stay. The dasher who eviscerated England in the winter took 20 balls to get off the mark, a cover drive for four off Jamieson bringing him relief. Jamieson moved over the wicket, had a close call for leg-before turned down, and then induced an outside edge from a wide ball, and India’s hopes for a Pant-inspired revival were dashed.

Once Ashwin edged to slip, after a counterattacking 22, India’s tail was exposed. Jamieson found himself on a hat-trick after sending back Ishant and Bumrah in consecutive deliveries, and Boult finished things off, when Ravindra Jadeja gloved one down the leg side. In taking four of the remaining seven India wickets, Jamieson picked up his fifth five-wicket haul in only his eighth Test, his tally now 44 wickets at an astonishing average of 14. Early days, but he looks an outstanding prospect.

Tall and broad-shouldered, it is not hard to see why he carries such a threat: he extracts steep bounce, is quick enough and has the ability to swing the ball both ways. For such a tall man, he bowls a fuller length than you might imagine, so challenging the stumps more than tall bowlers often do, the dismissal of Kohli a case in point. Jamieson’s final figures were 22-12-31-5, the perfect combination for a fielding captain of miserliness and wicket-taking threat.

THE TIMES