Feature

Dhoni's electric glovework, Taylor's costly spill

Plays of the day from the third ODI between India and New Zealand in Mohali

MS Dhoni pulled off two blindingly quick stumpings off Amit Mishra  •  Associated Press

MS Dhoni pulled off two blindingly quick stumpings off Amit Mishra  •  Associated Press

Guptill's monster hit
Martin Guptill has a thing for hitting roofs. His sixes have twice hit the roof at the Westpac Stadium in Wellington and once at Auckland's Eden Park. Stepping out of his crease to Hardik Pandya, he hit the first ball of the fourth over of the match for a humongous six that would have exited the PCA Stadium had he aimed towards the single-tier stands behind wide long-on. Instead, he launched the ball over the bowler's head, and ended up pinging the front wall of the third tier of the stand behind the straight boundary.
Those Dhoni hands
Amit Mishra had just dismissed Ross Taylor with a superlative bit of flight, slowing the ball down to bring the batsman forward, getting it to dip to make him stretch and drag his back foot out of the crease, and turning it past his outside edge. MS Dhoni, as he so often does, wasted no time in getting the bails off. Dhoni's task was just a little harder in Mishra's next over, though, when he spun another legbreak past a groping batsman. This time, though, Luke Ronchi's foot did not slide as far out of his crease as Taylor's had done, and the ball turned from a little wider outside off, which meant Dhoni had a greater distance to cover between collecting the ball and stumping Ronchi, with less time at his disposal. But in his inimitable, non-textbook manner, he collected the ball without drawing his gloves back an inch, and whipped the bails off before Ronchi even knew what had happened.
The spill
India lost Ajinkya Rahane in the third over of their chase. Virat Kohli, new at the crease, had just shown what kind of form he was in, driving Matt Henry to the cover point boundary off the third ball of the fifth over. The next ball was shorter, and Kohli went on the back foot, looking for a dab to third man. He had not accounted for the presence of a catching fielder at wide slip, however, set for precisely that kind of shot. The ball went low to Taylor, one of the better catchers in world cricket. He fell to his right, got both hands to the ball a couple of inches off the turf, and dropped it.
Those Kohli wrists
Right through India's chase, the only trouble their batsmen encountered from a flat Mohali pitch was the occasional tendency for the ball to stop on them. Rahane and Dhoni were both out caught at short cover, playing too early and having to check on-the-up drives. In the 33rd over, James Neesham got a shortish ball, angled into Kohli's body, to stop on him. Kohli adjusted brilliantly, standing still for an instant to let the ball get to him before whipping it off his hips to the midwicket boundary, nearly getting it to carry all the way over the rope.

Karthik Krishnaswamy is a senior sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo