TeaNew Zealand 72 for 5 (Ryder 26*, Hopkins 7*, Sreesanth 2-12, Ishant 2-24) v India
It was all going New Zealand's way. The pitch was flat, the wet outfield had done away with the morning session, the toss had been won, and India's best bowler was out, and yet it all went wrong for New Zealand. Once again, India's bowling unit put in an important performance just when people had stopped expecting one of them, giving India a big chance of finally putting one across New Zealand.
Sreesanth found swing and accuracy in his first spell to remove the openers, then Ishant Sharma, playing his first Test since his Mohali batting heroics, got a change of ends, extracted inswing and was rewarded with the wickets of Ross Taylor and Daniel Vettori.
New Zealand, though, will look at half an hour before the start when they start dissecting where it all went wrong. When Vettori was walking out for the toss, he saw Brendon McCullum land awkwardly during fielding practice, and then come down with a back strain. A quick decision had to be made, and New Zealand went with the man who scored a double-century to save the Hyderabad Test, prepared to have him bat in the middle order. Yet no one would have expected all the other specialist batsmen to join McCullum off the field by the 16th over. In fact McCullum wasn't ready to bat even when Vettori became the fifth man to fall, in the next over, and it was Jesse Ryder and Gareth Hopkins that took New Zealand through to tea with a nine-over partnership.
This is a decision that will be debated long and hard in New Zealand, for it could have upset the whole team's mindset, but it should not take away from Sreesanth's first spell, or Ishant's second.
Sreesanth took some time to get into rhythm. He failed to involve the batsman for the first seven balls he bowled, operating wide outside off. Perhaps it helped him that there was no McCullum eager to hurt him as he warmed himself up into a rhythm. By the time he started making the batsmen play, he also started getting swing. Martin Guptill, who scored 85 at No. 3 in Hyderabad, got the best of Sreesanth. It was a back-of-a-length delivery, pitching off, making Guptill play, then shaping away a bit to take the edge. It wasn't a no-ball either.
By now Sreesanth had started getting the ball to swing in towards the left-hand opener, Tim McIntosh. One of those squeezed through the gap, although the loose defence made it look more spectacular than it was.
Ross Taylor did something similar against Ishant. With his across movement on the crease, he was always going to be susceptible to anything moving in sharply. Ishant produced one of those, and Simon Taufel correctly judged that he was hit just in front of off.
Vettori, usually just the man for these situations, was bent on pulling everything short and paid the price for it. It is a shot that has got Vettori many runs, but today he could play it only twice. One of them got him an ungainly single, and the other he dragged onto the stumps from way outside off. Between those two Ishant strikes, Kane Williamson's dismissal summed up New Zealand's day so far. It was a full delivery from Ojha, innocuous, promising to land close enough to him, but somehow Williamson managed to scoop it to short cover.
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