New Zealand spinners must mimic India's relentlessness

As India struggled in England and Australia in 2011 and 2012 you imagine a scenario how their batsmen would do if they were facing their own bowlers. The Indian batsmen were handcuffed by the accuracy of England and Australia bowlers that year. What if, you wondered, there was a loose delivery every now and then. A gift on the pads. Something short and wide. Something to assure them runs will come if they wait. The England and Australia bowlers for sure did not make them feel that way.

When the New Zealand batsmen fought and fought and fought in their first innings in Kanpur, it was tempting to imagine a scenario where these batsmen faced their own bowlers. When after tens of minutes of concentration they could get a loose ball. What they got instead was this. In the second innings, R Ashwin took the new ball, bowled to their right-hand batsmen from round the wicket, had only two men on the off side, and the first time he was hit there was in the sixth over.

Since the start of the last home season, India's captain Virat Kohli has had the luxury of setting fields where even taking a single has been an almighty effort for the batsmen. There's Ashwin turning the ball sharply in, there are backward and forward short legs, there is another ring of short square leg and short midwicket behind them, and if you manage to beat them there is either a long-on or a deep midwicket or at times, both. A batsman will not take the aerial route with that field because with the turning ball chances are the ball will travel vertically more than horizontally. To add to this, in the second innings, you have a man on the sweep too.

So if you are facing Ashwin you have to pierce two gaps for one run. You get that only now and then. The field sounds good, but on the other side Ashwin bowled with only three fielders on the off side in the first innings and two in the second. One of them was a slip. In the first innings he had a man at mid-off and one between point and cover. In the second, there was no mid-off either. On the third morning, by which time he had got his rhythm going, Ashwin bowled the first boundary ball on the off side, in the eighth over of his spell. In the second innings, this happened only in the sixth, by which time he had taken three wickets to become the second-fastest bowler to 200 Test wickets.

Ravindra Jadeja often bowled without a point to the left-handed batsmen. Asking them to cut against the turn if they so fancied when he was not going to be that short anyway. In the first innings - let's take that as a comparison yardstick because in the second innings New Zealand bowlers would have been demoralised and India batsmen under no pressure - India's two specialist spinners were cut 21 times. Only six of them were boundaries. An attempt at a cut nearly brought them a wicket, and another resulted in the big one of Kane Williamson.

In fewer overs bowled between them, Mitchell Santner, Ish Sodhi and Mark Craig were cut away for 11 boundaries. Not to mention the pulls off Sodhi's bowling. Williamson did not have the luxury Kohli had. He had to have five-four fields for longer durations because his bowlers - not experienced enough in being the mainstays of their bowling - were not as accurate. The second innings, after New Zealand had fallen behind by 56, was worse, and doesn't need retelling.

Shane Jurgensen, New Zealand's bowling coach, was later asked what his bowlers could learn from India's. "They basically create a lot of pressure," Jurgensen said. "They make you play the ball consistently, they bowl straight and they are very experienced. It's shown in the little adjustments they make, positions on the crease, angles, field placements, they are obviously very good at that. Like we saw with their batters in their conditions, we saw the way they bowled in their conditions. We have to take the positives out of the way we bowled today and learn from that."

It is no surprise that the Ross Taylor kind of run-out tends to happen with teams under such relentless pressure. When the bowlers are not giving you any opportunities to relax and switch off, you tend to switch off at times you should not. New Zealand spinners had the conditions to work with, they obviously do not have the experience of bowling in them, but they will need to get closer to the relentlessness of India's spinners to give their batsmen a chance of competing.