The Kiwis were given a parting kick. India generally welcomes cricket teams to its soil by bamboozling them with spin-friendly conditions. The Kiwis suffered that too in the Tests although it must be said that not all three were surfaces the designer variety on which the ball would spin like a top from day one. There was the up-and-down bounce of the Eden Garden pitch to add a kind of keen mustard taste to an otherwise distinct Indian spices and spin dish.
A snapping point can usually be spotted in the cricket of touring teams and that would come early enough on tour when the turning ball begins to get on the nerves and crease-tied batsmen simply perish without a clue as to how to stand up to this infernal challenge of facing up to several questions being asked in every single over. The Kiwis did well to get over that point, which they had experienced in the Tests, and become a fighting force who challenged India’s ODI capabilities.
For the decider to be a cracker of a match, the toss had to fall in the visitors’ favour. When a plane is waiting to take them home, no team can concentrate on such a difficult job as chasing a target on a slowing pitch which was offering so much turn as to make it seem like this particular pitch had been imported from hell. Either it was extreme homesickness or a total inability to play spin led to the Kiwis crumbling like novices and spoiling the reputation they had built just three days earlier with a resounding win in the fourth ODI where India was choked off in the chase.
The Kiwis had twice strangled India in the chase, but they could obviously not capable of winning the series if they were left chasing even a midsized total. Great chases rarely happen in crunch games of a five-match ODI series as one team or the other has played itself out of its boots. A comfortable seat on the flight home would have seemed a better prospect than to tackle the wiles of Amit Mishra on a square turner who was ripping the ball off a rapidly slowing pitch. When in the crosshairs of such a situation, they were almost innocent as the West Indians are known to be when playing wrist spin in such competitive situations.
On such surfaces and in these situations of a chase, crease-tied batsmen can be sitting ducks, which is what the Kiwis unfortunately became just when the series was up for grabs. Leg spinners can tease you to your doom the moment they find sufficient vulnerability to bring in all their variations. Amit might not be nippy off the pitch but he makes the ball hang in the air for long enough to put sufficient doubts in the minds of the batsmen who, when confused, are unlikely to be able to read the ball well enough off the pitch.
There might have been a different tale to tell had Kane Williamson won the toss. But then Mahendra Singh Dhoni is the very epitome of a general who knows he has not only to be good but must also be lucky, as Napoleon used to say. Seeing how India had come a cropper in the chase twice in the series whenever the guiding hand of Virat Kohli was not there towards the finish, it would have been a real contest had only the order of the innings been reversed.
Nothing should, however, be take sheen away anything from the Amit Mishra performance, a showing that was enough to possibly bring him recognition in the Test series against England.
A wrist spinner on a wearing pitch is an asset for any Test captain and Kohli who drives the world's top Test side would be too pleased with such an additional weapon in his armoury, beside his match winner Ravi Ashwin and that beguiling performer on spinning pitches, ‘Sir Ravi’ Jadeja.
Different challenges may lie ahead of India on more true and sporting pitches abroad where winning ODI series could be quite a task for this young side that is being rebuilt with several newcomers. The signs are promising enough but the Indian cricket fan must realise that building limited-overs side is a tricky task as series objectives tend to come in the way whereas test teams are usually built with an eye on the long term future.
