India Beat New Zealand by 5 Wickets (DLS) in Auckland — Kamboj's Squeeze, Kohli's Flourish

Eden Park has a way of making fools of forecasts. Last Friday New Zealand hit 259 in a T20I here. On Wednesday, on one of the bounciest surfaces in world cricket, they could not get to 200 in an ODI. India's four seamers gave them almost nothing loose, the fielders took everything that came near them, and Shubman Gill kept his strike bowlers going until there was nobody left to bowl at. New Zealand were all out for 185 in 40.2 overs.

Then the Auckland weather tried to take the game away. Rain came twice, India's target was cut first to 167 in 40 overs and then to 143 in 32, and the win was only safe because New Zealand had been bowled out early. Virat Kohli made sure it was never in doubt: 74 off 51 balls, 13 fours, a stand of 113 with Gill, and a five-wicket win by DLS with 56 balls to spare.

Arshdeep Singh struck first with the short ball. Will Young top-edged a pull to Shreyas Iyer at square leg in the fifth over, and Henry Nicholls did almost exactly the same thing to Naman Dhir in the ninth. Then Kamboj came on first change and the game went quiet in India's favour. He bowled a maiden at Tim Seifert, followed it with dots, and New Zealand's batters started looking for a way out that wasn't there. Gurnoor Brar found it for them in the wrong direction: Seifert top-edged a pull to the substitute Ruturaj Gaikwad, and Tom Latham chipped a drive straight back to Brar, who took it one-handed.

The fielding matched the bowling. At 97 for 4, Glenn Phillips called Daryl Mitchell for a quick single to square leg, and Rohit Sharma, 39 years old, dived to his right and threw from the ground to KL Rahul. In the 29th over Kamboj found Nathan Smith's edge with a second slip in place, and Kohli dived low to his right for a one-handed catch. New Zealand lost five wickets for 42 runs. Arshdeep came back to remove Kyle Jamieson and Phillips, and although he then went looking for a five-for and gave Blair Tickner three sixes, Brar ended a 39-run last-wicket stand with another short ball. India had used every over of their three strike bowlers by the 41st over. On a day when rain was coming, that was the over that won the match.

The chase began badly. Rohit fell for a six-ball duck in the first over, caught by Santner off Jamieson after failing to keep down a drive. Gill, batting with a lot of control on an awkward surface, gave Kohli time, and Kohli did the rest. New Zealand reviewed an on-field not-out against him in the 13th over and lost it. He reached 50 off 35 balls, and by the time Gill fell at 114 for 2 in the 19th, India needed 29 more. Jacob Duffy's three quick wickets, Kohli among them to the short ball, made the scoreboard look busier than the result deserved. Rahul and Dhir finished it in the 23rd over.

This was not a batting line-up short of intent. Seifert, back because of injuries elsewhere in the squad, kept trying to take the pressure back to the bowlers and top-scored with 38. But too many New Zealand batters got out playing a shot the length didn't allow: Young, Nicholls and Seifert all top-edged pulls, and Latham and Phillips drove in the air. The top seven made 121 between them. Tickner's 34 off 23 at No. 11 was the most fluent batting of the innings, which tells you what the problem was.

With the ball, Duffy's 3 for 49 kept the margin respectable, and the loss of Mitchell to a run-out came after two earlier poor calls had already gone unpunished. Duffy said afterwards that the late start and the toss counted against them. Both are fair points. Neither explains losing five wickets for 42 in the middle overs. New Zealand have four more matches to work out how to bat on bounce, and the answer is probably to pull less.

A wet outfield delayed the start, and the pitch offered seam movement and steep bounce from the first over. That bounce was the main story of the day: Arshdeep and Brar took four of their seven wickets with the short ball, and India's late wobble in the chase came the same way. In his second spell Kamboj got Mitchell Santner to play on with a ball that turned sharply out of the bowlers' footmarks. The two rain breaks during India's innings cost 18 overs and turned a 50-over chase into a 32-over one.

Picked ahead of Mohammed Siraj, Kamboj bowled his ten overs in two spells for 22 runs, with two maidens. He took only two wickets, Santner and Smith, but the pressure he built is what got the others out. Arshdeep and Brar took seven wickets between them, mostly by attacking batters who were desperate for runs after a quiet spell from Kamboj. He kept finding seam movement right up to his last over, the 33rd of the innings. A bowler who goes for 2.2 an over on a ground where the T20 total four days earlier was 259 is the kind of player who does not show up in highlights and still decides the game.

Our preview had India as slight favourites, and they won. That part held up. Plenty of the rest did not. We expected Rohit to enjoy the short boundaries; he made a duck. We pointed to Kuldeep Yadav as the threat to New Zealand's batting, but he didn't play, and India's three spin overs from Axar were a footnote to a game won by seam. Several of the New Zealand players we picked out, Devon Conway, Rachin Ravindra and Matt Henry among them, were not in the XI. The preview did say the early movement on this surface could matter more than the batting fireworks, and it did. We'll take that one and note the misses.

India lead the five-match series 1-0, and the second ODI is on November 7. The bigger question for India is selection: Kamboj has made a strong case to keep his place ahead of Siraj, and Gill's habit of bowling his strike bowlers out early worked well here. For New Zealand the question is the batting order. Young, Nicholls and Seifert are all still auditioning for World Cup places, and all three got out to the short ball. There is time to fix that, but not much.