Ross Taylor: With sweep shots, we put pressure on their spinners

Ross Taylor and the Kiwis would be hoping to drive home the advantage of the lead

By: Ankit Banerjee |
October 23, 2017 11:14 am

New Zealand beat India by 6 wickets to take a 1-0 lead in the 3-match One Day International series against India. This is a big win for the visitors as it is a small tournament. It was Ross Taylor, who along with Tom Latham stitched a match-winning partnership to see the visitors home. Apparently, Indian captain Virat Kohli who was featuring in his 200th ODI game scored a maverick 121. Virat in the process became only the second cricketer to achieve this feat in the 200th game. Earlier, Trent Boult did early damage by removing the Indian openers. He picked up four wickets.

But the talking point was, Kuldeep and Chahal, who bowled 20 overs among themselves gave away 125 runs with only a wicket in return. That has been cited as the big reason for the loss.

“With the sweep shot. we are able to put pressure on the spinners and forced them to adjust their lengths. I thought he (Latham) did that outstandingly well. I told him to reverse sweep and he did it, and he kept doing it,” Taylor said at the post-match press conference.

“Having to field out there for over three and a half hours, we knew we had to get off to a good start and try and negate their spinners. Traditionally, New Zealand come here and struggle up-front in our innings,” he added.

It was a perfect day for New Zealand, as they chased down 280 with 6 wickets in hand to take a 1-0 series lead _

__ https://t.co/dciAWnmsWG pic.twitter.com/DyjzCWiJ2X

— ICC (@ICC) October 23, 2017

“Being able to rotate the strike in the right-left combination with Tom, I think you have got to give credit to Gup (Guptill) and Munners (Munro). They set the platform for us and we were able to rotate the strike and take it deep and then we knew we were in a good position in the game,” Taylor gave an insight to their run-chase,” he concluded.