Hamilton, 2-0 Down, and a New Zealand Side That Has Not Yet Reached 190

India lead the five-match series 2-0, and they have done it without their batting ever really being stretched. At Eden Park they chased a DLS target of 143 in 32 overs with 56 balls to spare. In Wellington on Saturday, in a game cut to 47 overs a side, they bowled New Zealand out for 134 in 41 overs and were 113 for 7 after 26 overs when the rain came back. They were four runs ahead of the DLS par. That is a slender thread on which to hang a series lead, but it is a lead all the same.

Fifteen wickets fell to fast bowlers in Wellington, and only 247 runs were scored in the whole day. Daryl Mitchell, the only batter to pass fifty, said it felt like batting on a trampoline: steep bounce, uneven bounce, and seam movement on a pitch that had soaked up two days of rain. Kyle Jamieson, who took 3 for 35, put it more cheerfully. After a T20I series of enormous totals, he said, it was nice to have a little favour for the bowlers again.

New Zealand have now made 185 and 134 in this series. Neither is a total you can defend for long in modern one-day cricket, and yet the second one very nearly was. That tells you how well their bowlers have gone, and how much the batting owes them.

New Zealand have lost six of seven tosses on this tour, and Jamieson was honest that batting first has been the harder job, with the ball doing more in the afternoon and a little moisture arriving under lights. Hamilton has the same 3pm start. If Mitchell Santner calls wrong again, his batters will again be asked to set the game up in the conditions least suited to it.

Even so, 23 for 3 in Wellington was not all about the pitch. Tim Seifert (0 off 5) chipped Auqib Nabi to midwicket, Will Young (6) was cramped and edged behind, and Henry Nicholls (11) played Anshul Kamboj on. Tom Latham and Glenn Phillips then fell to Gurnoor Brar's short ball in the same over. Mitchell's 55 off 104 and Santner's 31 off 38, a sixth-wicket stand of 59, showed what patience could earn. The question for Hamilton is whether someone in the top four can give Mitchell that kind of company earlier.

There is one fitness worry. Blair Tickner was concussed by a Kamboj bouncer in Wellington, and Matt Fisher came in as his replacement and took 1 for 23. Tickner may not be cleared in time, in which case Fisher could keep his place. A possible XI, if New Zealand keep the rest of the side: Young, Seifert (wk), Nicholls, Mitchell, Latham, Phillips, Santner (c), Nathan Smith, Jamieson, Fisher, Jacob Duffy.

India picked an unchanged side in Wellington, and the four-seam plan worked again. They did not go hunting for wickets. They hit the pitch hard, kept the runs down, and waited for New Zealand's batters to try something risky. Gurnoor Brar was the best of them, with 4 for 30 in ten overs and the Player of the Match award. He said afterwards that he bowled full first to bring the batters forward, and only then used the bouncer, because overusing it is a mistake. Kamboj (2 for 25), Nabi (2 for 31, his first international wickets) and Axar Patel (2 for 28) did the rest. Arshdeep Singh went wicketless, but his 7-1-16-0 was as tight as anything on the day.

The batting has not been tested for long, and that is both good news and a small warning. Shubman Gill made a first-ball duck in Wellington, Virat Kohli made 7 after his 74 at Eden Park, and Rohit Sharma scored 20 of his 23 in boundaries. Shreyas Iyer (30) and KL Rahul (26 not out) held the chase together. India made 78 of their 113 runs in boundaries, attacking the loose ball and defending the rest. On a truer Hamilton surface that approach should pay more.

Having won twice with the same XI, India may well stay unchanged, though with the series nearly won and two games to come at Mount Maunganui, a rest for one of the quicks or a look at Mohammed Siraj would not be a surprise. A plausible XI: Rohit, Gill (c), Kohli, Iyer, Rahul (wk), Axar, Naman Dhir, Kamboj, Arshdeep, Nabi, Brar.

Seddon Park has a reputation as one of New Zealand's better batting grounds, with a quick outfield and straight boundaries that are not long. It hosted the fifth T20I on November 1, when New Zealand chased with 12 balls and seven wickets to spare. Whether this ODI pitch behaves like that, or like the green, bouncy surfaces of Auckland and Wellington, is the big unknown. Jamieson suggested the ODI pitches have been fresh ones, and fresh pitches in a wet New Zealand spring can give the seamers a lot in the first hour.

If the surface is flatter, a par first-innings score might be somewhere between 260 and 280, and that would change the shape of the game. India's seamers would have less help, and New Zealand's batters, who have looked stuck rather than out of form, would have more room to play their shots. If it is green again, the toss could matter more than anything else, and the side batting second under lights may have the easier time of it.

India have been the better side in both ODIs, and their seamers have now bowled New Zealand out twice. That counts for a lot. But the Wellington margin was four runs, and on a better batting pitch the gap between these sides may be smaller than 2-0 suggests. New Zealand at home have a habit of fighting back, and they came back from 0-3 to 2-3 in the T20Is little more than a week ago.

Our lean is towards India, narrowly. If their quicks find bounce early again, it may be 3-0 and the series won. If New Zealand win the toss, get through the first 15 overs with wickets in hand and give Mitchell and Phillips a platform, this could be the day the series turns. It might just come down to how much the Seddon Park pitch has to say.

New Zealand vs India, 3rd ODI, Seddon Park, Hamilton — Tuesday, November 10, 3:00 PM NZDT / 7:30 AM IST. Unlock CricIntel Pro for ODI projections and match predictions.