Apart from Martin Guptill no other New Zealand batter offered anything as the visitors fell shot by 73 runs in the third and final match of the series
Team India completed a commanding 3-0 win beginning the Rahul Dravid era in style against New Zealand. Skipper Rohit Sharma, Harshal Patel, Axar Patel, Deepak Chahar, Venkatesh Iyer all contributed to a massive win by 73 runs in the third and final match of the T20I series at Eden Gardens in Kolkata.
Rohit decided to bat first after winning his third consecutive toss in the series. On a dewy evening, he and his new opening partner Ishan Kishan got the team off to a flier scoring 69 runs in the powerplay. Rohit was smacking everything and raced off to 39* off just 17 balls.
However, the innings slowly went into lumber as New Zealand skipper on the day, Mitchell Santner pegged back India twice in his first over by getting rid of Ishan and Suryakumar Yadav.
Santner soon removed Rishabh Pant, in his next over and India were reeling now despite the start they got. Rohit, on the other hand, marched on and brought up his second fifty of the series. But a blinder from Ish Sodhi off his own bowling cut short his stay.
The Iyers - Shreyas and Venkatesh - rebuilt with a few boundaries but they too got out in quick succession. India's innings was going nowhere only to be saved by late cameos by Harshal Patel and Deepak Chahar to reach the score of 184 runs, which now was in the zone of a good score.
New Zealand needed a good start to challenge the total and one thing which they didn't want was losing wickets and they lost them, plenty. It seemed like Axar Patel was prepping for the Test matches as he took three wickets one after the other quickly as he pegged the visitors early.
Martin Guptill continued in the same vein as he has done throughout the series. Even though he got a reprieve, he made it count and went on to score another fifty. However, once he got out to Yuzvendra Chahal it all fell apart for the T20 World Cup finalists.
No one was able to score much and when they wanted to, lost their wicket as eventually, they fell 73 runs short of the target.
Even though they have won coach Rahul Dravid said that they need to keep their feet on the ground knowing that New Zealand had a quick turnaround and have played four games in eight days, going into the Test series.
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