Lucknow: India’s spinners impressed on a rank turner to limit a self-destructing New Zealand to 99 for eight, their lowest total against the hosts, in the second T20 here Sunday.
With the pitch offering sharp turn, Hardik Pandya decided to employ spinners from both ends in the powerplay after opening the bowling himself.
Wrist spinners Kuldeep Chahal (1/17) and Yuzvendra Chahal (1/4), playing in a T20 together after a while, extracted a lot out of the Lucknow surface while finger spinner Washington Sundar (1/17) produced another tidy spell.
Chahal was left licking his lips after the first ball of his opening spell. It was a ripper that pitched on leg stump before beating the outside edge of Finn Allen’s bat. The opener perished two balls later trying to reverse sweep with the ball thudding into his back leg before crashing the stumps.
The in-form Devon Conway too fell to the reverse sweep as the ball kissed his gloves on way to wicketkeeper Ishan Kishan.
New Zealand were soon reduced to 35 for three in seventh over when the dangerous Glenn Phillips missed a straight ball from Deepak Hooda in his attempt to reverse sweep the part time off-spinner.
Daryl Mitchell got a beauty from Kuldeep that came back in sharply to shatter the stumps.
New Zealand bat deep but none of the batters were able to apply themselves on a testing pitch.
Pacer Arshdeep Singh, who has been guilty of bowling too many no balls lately and Shivam Mavi, were only used in the death overs.
Arshdeep did well to take wickets in his two tough overs and conceded only eight runs. Skipper Hardik ended with figures of one for 25 in four overs.
PTI
