IND vs NZ | India will be looking to whitewash New Zealand at Bay Oval, attests Manish Pandey

IND vs NZ | India will be looking to whitewash New Zealand at Bay Oval, attests Manish Pandey

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Manish Pandey, whose unbeaten fifty rescued India from a precarious position on Friday, attested that the team will be aiming to whitewash the hosts in the fifth T20I on Sunday. Pandey further revealed that coach Ravi Shastri’s valuable inputs have helped him adapt to the No.6 position.

For the second time in as many matches, India, at the Sky Stadium on Friday, snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, as they bounced back from an impossible position to beat New Zealand in a Super Over. Having already wrapped up the series 3-0 thanks to another Super Over in the 3rd T20I, the Men in Blue once again downed the Kiwis in a one-over eliminator thanks to the trio of KL Rahul, Jasprit Bumrah and Virat Kohli.

Manish Pandey, who brought up his maiden T20I fifty and propelled the visitors to a defendable score of 165, revealed that the team will set foot on to the Bay Oval stadium in Mount Maunganui hoping to inflict a series whitewash on the Kiwis. 

“Would be really amazing to win the series 5-0 because in the middle, especially today, we could have been a little bit easy on ourselves, but come the fifth T20I, we will look to win 5-0,” Pandey said in the post-match press conference.

“And that's gonna be our plan because as you said, nobody has done it before, especially India have not done it before, so I think it'll be a great opportunity to leave a mark."

Walking in to bat at No.6 - below both Shreyas Iyer and Shivam Dube - with the score at 75/4, the Karnataka man had a tedious task at hand, but held his composure and manipulated the Kiwi bowlers all over the ground to ensure that the team had a respectable target to defend. In the aftermath of the knock, the 30-year-old revealed that coach Ravi Shastri’s inputs have helped him adapt quickly to the No.6 position, with the latter helping Pandey with visualization techniques whilst also offering him advice on how to manoeuvre the ball better.

"Ravi Bhai has definitely been helping me. He's been talking to me about batting at No.6. In the last session we had, he kept telling me about how to use the crease and how the maneuver the ball because there will always be a set way bowlers will try to bowl to me, which means I have to be ready.

“He even spoke about visualization, how to think about that even before coming to bat, so I'm always happy to have a chat with him (Ravi Shastri) all the time and yes, he's been helping me."

With the score 88/6 at one stage, Pandey spent a vast majority of his time at the crease batting with tail-enders, with the duo of Shardul Thakur and Navdeep Saini giving him able support to drag the team’s total over 160. The Karnataka skipper shed light on the challenge of batting with the tail and revealed that it was important to rotate strike and minimize risks, even on flat wickets.

He further attested that it is important for No.6 batsmen to be ‘pre-ready’ when they walk in to bat, owing to the innings more or less having already been shaped by the performance of the batsmen preceding them.

"I start thinking about percentage cricket, I've to curb down my shots a little bit and can't be very expressive, even if the wicket is really flat. So I have to look to rotate strike, something that I've been working on, and today I felt it came off pretty well. These are small adjustments I have to work on.

“If you have to bat six, you have to be pre-ready because the game is already set for you at No.6 and sometimes you just have to play at the pace the previous batsmen have set for you. But today was an opportunity as we lost a couple of early wickets. So as I said, I had to adjust.” 

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