Much to the cheers of a noisy and cricket-crazy crowd and to millions of fellow Indians, the Indian cricket team returned to its winning ways by comprehensively defeating the visiting New Zealand by six wickets in the second ODI match of the 3-match ODI series in Pune yesterday. The series decider would be played on Sunday (29th October) in Kanpur.

The Kiwis, who are on a short tour of India to play 3 ODI matches and 3 T20 matches, landed up in the country more than 10 days back. Led by veteran Ross Taylor and wicketkeeper-batsman Tom Latham, the Kiwis ‘swept’ India out of the match by applying sweep shots (reverse sweep shots as well) aplenty to counter India’s spin threat while winning the first match in Mumbai last Sunday.

New Zealand captain Kane Williamson won the toss and decided to bat first but the Kiwis stuttered all throughout to end up with a score of 230/9 in their allotted quota of 50 overs. Nochols and Grandhomme scored 42 and 41 runs respectively for New Zealand while Bhuvaneshwar Kumar took three wickets in ten overs followed by Jasprit Bumrah and Chahal who took two wickets each.

India, which has an enviable record in chasing down scores in Tests, ODIs as well as in T20 matches, accomplished the simple chasing and won by six wickets and more than three overs to spare. The ever-dependable Shikhar Dhawan and Dinesh Karthick scored 68 and 64 runs respectively, thus paving way for India’s easy win which was aided by a run-a-ball 31 from Hardik Pandya.