The Great Game Called Cricket...

Years from now, when people think of Yusuf Pathan's maiden one-day century, they are unlikely to remember much more than the sheer brutality of it all. Yet, there was so much more to the innings than the clinical straight-hitting, which admittedly was in a league of its own. A batsman's response when his weaknesses are targeted can say a lot about his state of mind. While Yusuf dismantled New Zealand when they served him freebies in his hitting areas, the clarity he showed when tested with the short ball was even more telling.

Dead rubber or not, there was lot riding on this for Yusuf when he came out to join Rohit Sharma in what was panning into a veritable shoot-out between the two to stay in the hunt for a full-time middle-order opening. India required 208 off 183 when Yusuf took guard - not the situation cut out for a batsman termed a fifth-gear slogger who cannot handle the bouncer.

It is a reputation that has tagged Yusuf for long now. After losing favour following the tri-series in Zimbabwe, he returned to domestic cricket and did what came naturally to him - he flayed India's local attacks in all formats. The manner in which he scored his runs - 195 off 138 balls in a Ranji game, 89 off 42 to lift a derailed Twenty20 chase, and a 63 off 30 in the Challenger Trophy - did not help his cause as much as reinforce the tag of flat-track bully. Had he been plonking his front foot forward and tucking into over-pitched deliveries, or had he found a way past the short stuff? He got his chance to address that question today.

It helped Yusuf that he checked in against spin, before facing the trial by bounce. Daniel Vettori tried trapping him with arm-balls, getting the odd delivery to skid in with the late-evening dew. Nathan McCullum was flighting his offbreaks, asking to be lofted over a vacant long-on. With India still well off the greens, Yusuf resisted the bait. He began with measured dabs on either side of the wicket, picking Vettori's variations from the pitch and reaching out to deal with McCullum. By the 25th over, he had moved to a quiet 8 off 13 balls, before Vettori brought back the seamers.

Andy McKay, New Zealand's fastest bowler, came on and square-leg was pushed back to the boundary. McKay's third ball to Yusuf was a slow bouncer, which he spotted early but chose to let go. Two balls later it came again. McKay's left-arm, around-the-wicket angle, at around 140 kph, makes the bouncer a tough delivery for any right-hand batsman. Six months ago, Yusuf would have pressed forward, looking for the driving length, before arresting his momentum and getting into a tangled attempt at a pull without transferring the weight back. No such confusion this time: he stayed put on a more balanced and crouched stance at the crease, and ducked under it with intent.

McKay tried it again in the 30th over, and having warmed up to the chase by now with a flat six off Vettori, Yusuf took the challenge. He was however beaten by the pace and failed to make contact with the pull. Yusuf's reaction gave nothing away - no self-admonishing, no air-practice to perfect the shot - he just stood his ground and looked down the track as McKay's follow-through ended closer to the batting crease than normal. The next ball was pitched up, the surprise delivery to catch the batsman waiting on the backfoot for another bumper, but Yusuf knew the two-card trick was being played, and lofted it cleanly over mid-off.

Rohit departed, the rains came down and broke play for an hour with India needing 113 from 14 overs. While Saurabh Tiwary fidgeted around with nervous energy, one could sense calmness in the way Yusuf faced up to a few throwdowns before play resumed.

Vettori's first ball on resumption was launched over long-on, bringing up Yusuf's half-century. In the 39th over, he asked for the batting Powerplay, and flexed his muscles by depositing the fifth ball of Kyle Mills' over, over the roof behind wide long-on. Tim Southee tested him with fuller lengths and three quiet overs ensued, as Yusuf played out incisive yorker after yorker without panicking. In the 43rd over, he made up for lost time, swinging Mills' shoddy lengths for 21 runs through the leg-side. India moved ahead of the D/L par-score, and from there it was a canter to victory, despite Tiwary's scratchiness at the other end.

Fittingly enough, the century came off a McKay bouncer that was dispatched over wide long-on. It angled in sharply from wide of off stump, and Yusuf moved back and across, without lunging forward as he once used to. The crack of the ball pinging the meat of the swinging blade gave way to warm applause from a crowd that had earned its treat for having waited through the rains. Yusuf threw his arms up and soaked in the moment. It is a shot that will be replayed several times in India in days to come. It is the shot of a man who had stared his biggest challenge in the face and found a way to deal with it.

They said he couldn't perform in international cricket. They said he was good only for IPL and domestic cricket. He proved them wrong tonight. Yusuf Pathan engineered an improbable win for India with a violent hundred, his first in ODIs, and perhaps sealed a World Cup berth for himself. It looked grim for India when they were tottering at 188 for 5 in the 34th over, after the fall of Rohit Sharma, but Pathan pulled off a heist. One game doesn't guarantee a successful future of course, especially considering that this New Zealand attack wasn't potent enough to test his weakness against short balls, but Pathan left his past behind with a potentially career-changing innings on a drizzly Bangalore night. His century overshadowed a superbly-crafted 98 from James Franklin that had allowed New Zealand to reach a daunting total.

Pathan declared his intent with two brutal shots. The first came in the 37th over, when play resumed after a one-hour rain break that didn't reduce any overs and left India needing 113 runs from 14. Yusuf launched a Daniel Vettori delivery into screaming fans beyond long-on and clubbed a length delivery from Kyle Mills over the roof at cow corner. A couple of quiet overs followed but Pathan roused himself in a violent 43rd over: he smashed Mills for three fours - a lofted hit overs cover and two flicks past short fine-leg - before crashing a length delivery for six over midwicket. And when he brought up his maiden hundred with a pulled six, off Andy McKay in the next over, the game was all but over. He found support in Saurabh Tiwary, who intelligently rotated the strike, and the pair gave India a 4-0 lead in the series.

It was an incredible effort considering India had lagged behind for a major part of the chase. McKay's twin strikes to remove Gautam Gambhir and Virat Kohli in the 10th over and Nathan McCullum's double-strike to dismiss Yuvraj Singh and Parthiv Patel, who hit his maiden fifty, had pushed India on the back foot. And when Tim Southee had Rohit Sharma hitting straight to mid-off, New Zealand would have been thinking about the win, but Yusuf crushed their hopes with a blinder.

As good as their batting was in the end overs, their death bowling nearly lost India the game. Franklin's knock provided the perfect climax to New Zealand's spirited approach; the openers attacked to take them to 91 for 2 in the 14th over and the middle-order adapted to the fall of wickets - rebuilding at a slower pace before Franklin's final flourish.

Franklin looted 22 runs in the final over, bowled by Nehra, with some wickedly entertaining big hits: he smashed the second delivery to the straight boundary, the third over long-off, the fourth to midwicket, and the fifth to the wide long-off boundary. It was not, however, a knock of such fury and adrenalin from the start. He had built his innings with conventional shots, such as the one in 47th over, when he was batting with the tail and was under some pressure. He sashayed down the track to Yusuf Pathan, who had just picked up two wickets, and nonchalantly flicked him wide of the deep midwicket fielder. No manic rush or desperation, he simply carried on with his style, sweeping the spinners and flicking and square-driving the seamers to get to his fifty. Only in the final two overs did he explode. It seemed he had done enough to win the game for his team, especially after India's top-order had collapsed, but Yusuf seized the day.

Gautam Gambhir has said being captain for India's ODI series against New Zealand has not given him any extra motivation to perform with the bat. "As a player or a captain I have always given 100%. Captaincy has not changed my batting," he said. "I am striking the ball well and would have batted like this under any captain."

Gambhir scored his second successive unbeaten century, in the third ODI in Vadodara on Saturday, to give India an unassailable 3-0 lead in the series.

In Saturday's match, India's bowlers restricted New Zealand to 224 in their 50 overs after putting them in to bat. Gambhir admitted it was an advantage bowling first on the Vadodara wicket but praised his bowlers for setting up the win. "When there is dew in Baroda it does a bit in the morning; it's red soil. It was a good toss to win but it was a great effort from our bowlers to restrict them to 225-odd.

"[Zaheer Khan] is the best left-arm fast bowler in the world now. [R] Ashwin has a lot of variety and can bowl well during Powerplays and the slog overs. If he keeps doing that he will be a big asset to the team. Munaf [Patel] bowled great at first-change. It's tough to get figures of 1 for 28 in 10 overs on a subcontinent wicket. Yusuf [Pathan] contributed with the ball, as well."

Gambhir kept a slip in almost throughout the New Zealand innings and said the aggressive tactics were prompted by New Zealand's depth in batting. "There was still a bit of dampness out there and we wanted to take wickets as New Zealand bat deep down with Kyle Mills coming in at No.10."

With Ravindra Jadeja in the side for the third ODI, Yuvraj Singh was not called upon to bowl any overs, despite having taken three wickets in the first game in Guwahati. It is still uncertain whether India will play seven batsmen or an allrounder in the 2011 World Cup, and Yuvraj's bowling could be a deciding factor in the balance of the team. Gambhir said Yuvraj was still an important part of the ODI setup. "Yuvi is an experienced player and an integral part of the side. He has been a great help to me as captain."

With several senior players rested, the series against New Zealand is an opportunity for the India selectors to look at some of the fringe players ahead of the World Cup, and Gambhir welcomed the competition. "It's good to have competitions for various places. If the selectors have a headache in this aspect, it's a very good sign for Indian cricket," he said. He, however, hinted India may not experiment too much with the side for the last two ODIs despite the series being won. "We should try and put our best team on the park as it is an international game and we are playing a quality side."

New Zealand's one-day woes continued into a ninth straight game as their batting failed to cope with moist early-morning conditions in Vadodara. Zaheer Khan, coming back after injury, and Munaf Patel swung and seamed the ball all right, but New Zealand will look back at how unremarkable their response was. With the pitch easing out in the afternoon, Gautam Gambhir made the chase look ridiculously easy, becoming only the eighth captain to score centuries in back-to-back ODIs.

From the time he won the toss and put New Zealand in, Gambhir hardly put a foot wrong, keeping his perfect captaincy record and India's unbeaten home season intact. New Zealand's openers gifted their wickets, the middle order went into a shell, and even though James Franklin and Nathan McCullum added 94 for the eighth wicket, it was never going to be enough. Not with Gambhir making room and peppering the off side with drives and cuts, bringing up his fifty in 30 balls, out of India's 64 then.

Watching Gambhir bat, the struggle New Zealand went through early in the morning seemed far away. Brendon McCullum, making a comeback himself, laid out a welcome mat for Zaheer, guiding a widish delivery straight to second slip. Martin Guptill ran himself out soon after.

Between those dismissals, Williamson set the template for the day. His front foot went across to the first ball he faced. It swung in enough down the leg side to be called a wide, but Williamson had fallen over trying to correct the movement. Neither Williamson nor Ross Taylor could get rid of that tendency during their short stays. Taylor's wicket, though, came in a tame fashion as he tried drive Zaheer on the up. The shot was played away from his body, and an inside edge ensued.

Taylor's No. 4 position has been a matter of debate, with arguments that he should take more responsibility and bat at No. 3. Williamson's inability to counterattack only seemed to highlight that notion. For the third game running, he got off to a slow start, and did little to hit Munaf off his plan.

Munaf loves to bowl back of a length, just outside off, and wobble the ball slightly either way. He tends to get a bit rattled when somebody uses that predictability to come down and hit him. In this series, though, no one has come close to doing that. And once Williamson allowed Munaf to do what he wanted, that lbw call seemed a matter of time with the batsman regularly falling over.

Modern captains tend to go into the containment mode once the 15th over ends irrespective of how many wickets they might have got. Gambhir, who had put New Zealand in, was refreshingly old-school. When he saw R Ashwin turn the first ball, he set Test-match fields for Scott Styris and James Franklin. Yuvraj, at leg slip, soon came into action taking a sharp low catch to send Styris back. Daniel Vettori did a B McCullum, guiding Yusuf Pathan straight to slip for another sharp catch for Yuvraj, who later returned to leg slip to get rid of Gareth Hopkins too.

Having fallen behind the over-rate, though, Gambhir omitted to use four of Zaheer and Nehra's overs. Facing part-time spinners on a pitch that had eased out a bit, Franklin and N McCullum had little trouble building a partnership. It was almost as if Gambhir was not concerned at all by their stand.

The way he turned out with the bat, Gambhir need not have worried either.

After having been at the wrong end of Gambhir's off-side play in Jaipur, New Zealand tried to cramp him up, and found that Gambhir was equally adept at scoring through the on side. He flicked the second ball he faced fine for a boundary. In Kyle Mills' next over, he picked the gap between mid-on and midwicket. In Mills' next, Gambhir started making room and went into his favourite off side. He capitalised on the correction on the next delivery, moving to 23 off 11.

Andy McKay got the same treatment: wide ball, four; too straight, four; wide again, four. With time, Gambhir's favourite chips over extra cover and midwicket came out too. He might have seemed to slow down after reaching his fifty, but he took only 58 further deliveries to get to the hundred.

M Vijay didn't struggle like he did in Jaipur, but had to stay content with being the lesser partner in the opening stand. And like he did in Japiur, Virat Kohli came out and scored a half-century in the company of his captain as India cantered home.

The Tendulkar moment of the day
It came from his fan Kane Williamson. The delivery from Ishant Sharma kept low even as it cut back in from outside off. Williamson crouched, tried to get the bat in the way but the ball shot under it to clatter on the stumps. Williamson bent his knees and slowly sunk his bat on to the ground. It reminded you of Tendulkar's reaction when he gets bowled by deliveries that don't climb as much as expected.

Guptill's horror moment of the day - I
The delivery from Pragyan Ojha landed comfortably outside the leg stump and turned in to the hit the pad. Simon Taufel, who has been slipping up often these days, sent Martin Guptill packing. It was a golden duck for Guptill.

Guptill's horror moment of the day - II
This time around he was at the non-striker's end as a runner for Jesse Ryder. The ball from Harbhajan Singh turned well clear of bat or pad and bounded off to short-leg but Nigel Llong raised the finger. The unlucky batsman was Ross Taylor who smiled ruefully as he walked off. The best reaction, though, came from Guptill: his mouth opened wide agape, his eyes almost bulged out and he slowly sank to his left.

The catch of the day
Gautam Gambhir was just hit on his body by a hard shot from Taylor at short leg when Harbhajan Singh produced a bat-and-pad prod from Gareth Hopkins. Gambhir moved quickly to his right and lunged out with an outstretched hand to pouch it. He got celebratory whacks on his helmet from his team-mates.

The drop of the day
Gambhir had retired to the dressing room to get treatment after sustaining that injury on taking a hit from Taylor. He returned and was placed at short extra cover. Ryder crashed one from Harbhajan straight at him at a comfortable height but he clanged it. VVS Laxman held his head and Harbhajan stared ruefully at Gambhir.

The celebration of the day
Suresh Raina had lured Ryder to give a catch at mid-off and was immediately enveloped by his team-mates. They then proceeded to ruffle his hair and then started to slap his head in unison. Doug Bollinger would have been happy. For, Raina had once tried to pull Bollinger's hair out, or so it seemed, after a dismissal in the IPL. Bollinger had just weaved some "fake" hair on his bald pate.

Finally the actors returned to the original script. The groundsman was the first person to get the revised lines: the ball turned and bounced, kicked and spat angrily, not from day one but the third evening onwards. With a big lead in the bag, the Indian bowlers got into character without wasting time. They were all over the New Zealand batsmen, who were surrounded by all kinds of close-in fieldsmen. The arm balls arrived too to trap the unsure, who crumbled under pressure, as almost everybody thought they were supposed to right through the series. The umpires felt the heat too, which is expected with the ball dancing and a gang of fielders around the bat.

As the three spinners shared the wickets - Suresh Raina being the third - and Ishant cleared up the tail, the Test win that India had to wait for for longer than expected arrived remarkably quickly, half an hour after lunch on the fourth day. It was also India's third-biggest win.

Pragyan Ojha has spent most of his young career bowling on slow and low tracks, and has come across as restrictive and robotic. It might still be too early to call - given the buffer of runs and the assistance from the pitch - but Ojha showed today he can attack too. He started by outsmarting Brendon McCullum, who tried the old bullying tactic of hitting early boundaries and trying to get the fielders out of his face. Ojha kept pitching the ball up, flighting it, giving it the best chance to turn and bounce. McCullum played back, and Ojha did the thing to do on a turner, slip in the straighter one. Dead plumb.

However, because the pitch was offering so much turn, the decision to give Martin Guptill lbw was ordinary. Being Ojha's regulation offbreak, it could either have pitched within the stumps or hit the stumps. As the replays showed, it was hitting the stumps all right, but after having pitched outside leg.

Harbhajan, who set the template of mixing in the straighter ones yesterday, came to get nightwatchman Gareth Hopkins with a flighted, dipping offbreak. Gautam Gambhir, who showed signs of return to form with the bat during this match, made the lunging bat-pad catch to his right, two balls after he was hit a by a full-blooded sweep from Ross Taylor.

Taylor, who was troubled by the outswing from Sreesanth in the morning, decided there was no point in hanging around and waiting for the one that jumps at him and takes the edge. So he started moving across and throwing his bat around, along the way surviving one plumb lbw when he missed a sweep right in front of the stumps. As it turned out, he didn't have to wait for the one that jumps and takes the edge: he was given caught bat-pad off the pad.

Taylor was so bemused he laughed all the way back to the pavilion, and Guptill, Jesse Ryder's runner, was so stunned he found it tough to close his gaping mouth. Ryder was the only batsman who looked at ease against the turning ball, but he got out trying to dominate the part-time spin of Raina, the second time he has fallen to the bowler.

Raina was not done yet. In his second over, he bowled the straighter one too, trapping Daniel Vettori in front, the third time he has taken the New Zealand captain.

Tim Southee swung the bat a little bit, hitting three sixes, but he only delayed the inevitable. This game will also be remembered for Chris Martin's first duck against India in six Tests.

With the breaking of New Zealand's resistance complete, India have not lost any of their last nine series. However, given the big difference in the two teams' rankings, the 1-0 result earned India a two-point penalty in the ICC Test rankings.


Smart StatsIndia's win was their third biggest in Tests and their second in home Tests, behind the innings-and-219-run win over Australia in Kolkata in 1998.

India have not lost a single series since the 2-1 result in Sri Lanka in 2008.

New Zealand lost seven wickets for 86 runs in the first session, collapsing from 38 for 1 to 124 for 8.

The defeat was New Zealand's fifth heaviest in Tests and their worst against India.

Their previous defeat by an innings to India was in 1956 in Chennai.

Harbhajan Singh went past Malcolm Marshall's tally of 376 wickets and is now 13th on the all-time list of Test wicket-takers.

He has 258 wickets in home Tests, which puts him fifth on the list of bowlers with most wickets in home Tests.

The 51-run stand between Andy McKay and Tim Southee was New Zealand's seventh half-century stand for the ninth wicket against India.

Smallest margin of victory (by wickets)
Winner Margin Opposition Ground Match Date Scorecard
England 1 wicket v Australia The Oval 11 Aug 1902 Test # 74
South Africa 1 wicket v England Johannesburg 2 Jan 1906 Test # 88
England 1 wicket v Australia Melbourne 1 Jan 1908 Test # 97
England 1 wicket v South Africa Cape Town 1 Jan 1923 Test # 149
Australia 1 wicket v West Indies Melbourne 31 Dec 1951 Test # 345
New Zealand 1 wicket v West Indies Dunedin 8 Feb 1980 Test # 873
Pakistan 1 wicket v Australia Karachi 28 Sep 1994 Test # 1268
West Indies 1 wicket v Australia Bridgetown 26 Mar 1999 Test # 1453
West Indies 1 wicket v Pakistan St John's 25 May 2000 Test # 1497
Pakistan 1 wicket v Bangladesh Multan 3 Sep 2003 Test # 1658
Sri Lanka 1 wicket v South Africa Colombo (PSS) 4 Aug 2006 Test # 1812
India 1 wicket v Australia Mohali 1 Oct 2010 Test # 1972
England 2 wickets v Australia The Oval 11 Aug 1890 Test # 34
Australia 2 wickets v England Sydney 3 Dec 1907 Test # 96
England 2 wickets v South Africa Durban 16 Dec 1948 Test # 306
Australia 2 wickets v West Indies Melbourne 10 Feb 1961 Test # 506
India 2 wickets v Australia Mumbai (BS) 10 Oct 1964 Test # 567
Australia 2 wickets v India Perth 16 Dec 1977 Test # 811
West Indies 2 wickets v England Nottingham 5 Jun 1980 Test # 880
New Zealand 2 wickets v Pakistan Dunedin 9 Feb 1985 Test # 1012
West Indies 2 wickets v Pakistan Bridgetown 22 Apr 1988 Test # 1097
Pakistan 2 wickets v England Lord's 18 Jun 1992 Test # 1190
Australia 2 wickets v South Africa Port Elizabeth 14 Mar 1997 Test # 1360
England 2 wickets v South Africa Centurion 14 Jan 2000 Test # 1483
Sri Lanka 2 wickets v Pakistan Rawalpindi 26 Feb 2000 Test # 1485
England 2 wickets v West Indies Lord's 29 Jun 2000 Test # 1503
India 2 wickets v Australia Chennai 18 Mar 2001 Test # 1539
Australia 2 wickets v South Africa Johannesburg 31 Mar 2006 Test # 1795
Australia 3 wickets v England Manchester 16 Jul 1896 Test # 51
England 3 wickets v South Africa Johannesburg 26 Feb 1910 Test # 108
England 3 wickets v Australia Melbourne 29 Dec 1928 Test # 178
England 3 wickets v South Africa Port Elizabeth 5 Mar 1949 Test # 313
Australia 3 wickets v West Indies Brisbane 9 Nov 1951 Test # 340
South Africa 3 wickets v England Manchester 7 Jul 1955 Test # 410
Australia 3 wickets v West Indies Georgetown 31 Mar 1978 Test # 822
India 3 wickets v West Indies Chennai 12 Jan 1979 Test # 841
England 3 wickets v Pakistan Leeds 26 Aug 1982 Test # 933
Pakistan 3 wickets v England Karachi 2 Mar 1984 Test # 978
Pakistan 3 wickets v Sri Lanka Faisalabad 2 Jan 1992 Test # 1182
West Indies 3 wickets v England Port of Spain 5 Feb 1998 Test # 1398
England 3 wickets v West Indies Port of Spain 13 Feb 1998 Test # 1399
Pakistan 3 wickets v Zimbabwe Harare 21 Mar 1998 Test # 1412
England 3 wickets v Sri Lanka Kandy 7 Mar 2001 Test # 1532
South Africa 3 wickets v Sri Lanka Centurion 15 Nov 2002 Test # 1626
West Indies 3 wickets v Australia St John's 9 May 2003 Test # 1645
England 3 wickets v Australia Nottingham 25 Aug 2005 Test # 1762
Australia 3 wickets v Bangladesh Fatullah 9 Apr 2006 Test # 1797
New Zealand 3 wickets v Bangladesh Chittagong 17 Oct 2008 Test # 1888
Pakistan 3 wickets v Australia Leeds 21 Jul 2010 Test # 1965
Records includes the following current or recent matches:
India v Australia at Mohali, 1st Test, Oct 1-5, 2010 [Test # 1972 - Live]
» India 216/9 (58.4 ov, PP Ojha 5*, VVS Laxman 73*, MG Johnson 0/50) - Match over
England v Pakistan at Lord's, 4th Test, Aug 26-29, 2010 [Test # 1971]
England v Pakistan at The Oval, 3rd Test, Aug 18-21, 2010 [Test # 1970]