India’s campaign in the Champions Trophy received a terrible jolt as they were thrashed by the New Zealanders by a whopping margin of 103 runs in their only warm-up game before the tournament. They play Pakistan on the 26th of September in their first game.
In what was evidently a very rusty looking performance by the Indian side, the Kiwis rattled up a total of 301 in their fifty overs and then did not even allow the Indians to get close to 200. The Kiwis had begun well in their innings thanks to Jesse Ryder who took on the Indian pace attack and smashed a 48-ball 57. In the company of Martin Guptill, he took the score onto 93/1 before getting out. But this did not stop Guptill from continuing in the same vein as the portly opener, as the Kiwis sat pretty at 148/2 at around the half way stage.
It was a mid-innings collapse that would have raised the Indian hopes as the Kiwis slumped to 177/5 and then to 211/6 losing all their front line batsmen except Neil Broom. Broom, who is an all-rounder then took on the Indian bowlers in the last few overs, and took 90 runs off the last 46 balls to guide the Kiwis to their 301. He scored 66, that came off 46 balls only and had the Indians flat on the mat.
In response, the Indians – who weren’t playing Gautam Gambhir and Sachin Tendulkar – had a decent first wicket stand between Dinesh Karthik and Rahul Dravid, but one the duo was dismissed, there was nothing much to write home about. M.S.Dhoni scored nine, Yusuf Pathan was gone for 13, while Yuvraj Singh matched Dhoni in his score. New comer Abhishek Nayar pottered about for his 41, but it was barely any consolation for a side that was all out in 40.3 overs.
Bond, Vettori and Oram, all finished with a couple of wickets and with valuable match practice ahead of their first game later this week. In contrast, India will have a lot of thinking to do before they take on arch-rivals Pakistan in their first game on Saturday.
