New Zealand clinch a thriller
New Zealand beat India by five wickets in the second and final Twenty20 cricket match at Westpac stadium on Friday.
With this win, New Zealand won the two-match series 2-0.
The New Zealand run chase began with a flourish with McCullum and Jesse Ryder (26) putting on a brisk 53-run partnership.
Ryder hoicked Irfan Pathan for a six in the very first ball and then hit Zaheer Khan for two fours in the next over as he played a cameo off 15 balls before being dismissed by Khan Indians were lucky to have their second wicket when Kiwi umpire Gary Baxter adjudged dangerous Martin Guptill (10) leg before off Harbhajan Singh despite a big inside edge.
Guptill went for a pull, missed the shot and Indians made a furious appeal. Baxter had a long look at it and surprised everyone by raising his finger, upholding the appeal.
Ravinder Jadeja, who replaced Rohit Sharma in the side, bowled in tandem with Harbhajan to put brakes on the Kiwi scoring rate.
With the spinners drying up the runs, the game gradually tilted towards India after Pathan's twin blows left the home team with a difficult task of scoring 23 runs off 12 balls.
Pathan sets up an exciting climax
Pathan dismissed Taylor and Jacob Oram (0) on consecutive balls at the start of the 18th over, setting up an exciting climax to the match.
Yuvraj Singh bowled the penultimate over and the slow left-armer dismissed Neil Broom but gave away 11 runs. Pathan then did extremely well by giving away just three runs in the first three balls but McCullum hit him for two consecutive fours to level the scores.
Top Performer: Brendon McCullum
In the last ball Rohit Sharma dropped the difficult chance off McCullum much to the dismay of his teammates.
In the Indian innings, as in the first T20 at Christchurch the Indian top order collapsed like a pack of cards to bring the pressure on the middle order batsmen.
Virender Sehwag was at his belligerent best, savaging Tim Southee and Iain O'Brien at will. But he chanced his arms too often and offered a simple catch to Vettori at mid-off.
When Suresh Raina (4) and Gautam Gambhir fell close on the heels of each other, India were deep in the woods at 47 for three.
India struggle against Black Caps
But Yuvraj Singh (50) and Mahendra Singh Dhoni (28 not out) returned India back into the game, posting a measured 45 runs for the fourth wicket.
Yuvraj was sedate at the start, but once he had his eye in, he went hammer and tongs, smashing Daniel Vettori for successive sixes.
He brought up his fourth half century in T20 cricket with a towering six off O'Brien. But the exuberant left hander perished off the next ball, slicing O'Brien to Jacob Oram at deep cover-point. Ravindra Jadeja showed pluck on his T20 international debut, producing a 16-ball 19 under pressure.
With the run-rate much below the expected target, Dhoni strove to cut loose in the end overs but the New Zealanders were up to the task, putting the ball in the right areas, often into the block hole.
Though they dropped a couple of difficult chances in the deep, their fielding was exceptional tonight, as they dived and pounced on the ball with great alacrity to cut off possible boundaries.
The Teams:
India: Gautam Gambhir, Virender Sehwag, Suresh Raina, Yuvraj Singh, MS Dhoni (Captain), Yusuf Pathan, Ravindra Jadeja, Irfan Pathan, Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan, Ishant Sharma
New Zealand: Daniel Vettori (Captain), Neil Broom, Ian Butler, Martin Guptill, Brendon McCullum, Nathan McCullum, Iain O'Brien, Jacob Oram, Jesse Ryder, Tim Southee, Ross Taylor.
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