726 runs in a day, and that with five overs lost because the Kiwis got bowled out. If not for a couple of stupid runouts up front, they would have chased down India's 392. In the end, numbers nine and ten were threatening to take the Kiwis home. When somebody like Kyle Mills starts tonking sixes at will against one of the top three ODI attacks in the world, you know the game has been reduced to a farce.
What makes cricket a far more nuanced game than baseball are the multiple factors that come into play simply by virtue of the ball having to be bowled into a pitch, rather than hurled on the full. But if the pitch has no pace or bounce or spin, and the ground is tiny to boot, then cricket becomes deadly dull because there's no contest between bat and ball at all. At least in baseball, the ball is flung from a shorter distance and the bat is cylindrical; so there's a contest.
The thrill of watching a batsman sashay down the pitch to a spinner is the risk involved in it - if the ball spins off the pitch past the bat, the batsman is left stranded and gets stumped; or, if the batsman misreads the flight and fails to get to the pitch of the ball, he's liable to miscue the shot and hole out in the deep. Remove the risk and there's no thrill - which is what happens on a flat track and tiny ground: the ball can't spin past the bat and even a mishit will clear the ropes.
It's equally one-dimensional when the pace bowlers operate. Normally, a batsman can get into strife, for instance, if he plays forward to a ball that is short of a length because he can get caught out by the bounce or deviation. But if the pitch will negate all that, then it's just a matter of picking up the line of the ball from the moment it leaves the bowler's hand and playing through that line. On top of that, the ground is tiny - so, all you need to ensure is that you don't miss the line (as Yuvraj eventually did) and that you have a good, solid bat so that even a push through the covers will take the ball to the boundary or a lap sweep to a yorker will carry it over fine leg for six.
Such a pitch and ground devalue the game as well as the skills not only of bowlers but also batsmen. What's the distinction between a Sachin Tendulkar and a Kyle Mills if both can hit sixes with impunity?