India vs New Zealand | How and where India lost first ODI in Mumbai

Since Zaheer Khan's exit from the international scene, India have never had a proper left-arm pacer in the team and apart from the occasional burst of Jaydev Unadkat and Barinder Sran, India haven't had to face the challenge in the nets either. Most recently, Australian left-arm quick Jason Behrendorff accounted for India's top four in the second T20I at Guwahati, exploiting his natural angle against the right-handers and paving way for the visitors' series-levelling victory. To avoid a similar situation, the Indian team management invited Arjun Tendulkar to get them accustomed to Trent Boult's devastating late swinging deliveries. But in the first game, Boult, being Boult, wrecked havoc on the Indian top order by not allowing them to open their arms. The Kiwi man bowled the regular angled-across deliveries which meant that everything he bowled went mostly in one direction and followed the same path - away from left-handers and into the right-handers. Knowing his natural angle, he also restained from bowling more full balls in his first spell thus not allowing the Indian openers to make the most of the powerplay overs. If that was not enough, he came out to bowl his second spell and bowled yorker length ones to keep the batsmen guessing at all times while sending MS Dhoni and Hardik Pandya packing to exploit the chink in Indian batting order.

Kohli and Karthik defy odds with consummate ease

New Zealand's struggle against spinners is not unknown to anyone and India didn't have to roll back too much to reach out to the footage of their recent performances against them, having played them at a similar time last year. But every now and then, the Kiwis had one or two batsmen, who could play the spinners with effortless ease. In the build-up to the series, many players including Tom Latham, the visitors' best batsman last year, Ross Taylor and coach Mike Hesson talked about the importance of facing in-form Indian spinners. However, the Indian skipper didn't test them much by not introducing the part-timer Kedar Jadhav to the attack. With an easy, repeatable action, decent loop, and most importantly the ability to land deliveries in half decent areas made Jadhav a bankable spinner as the batsman tried to take chances against him, which more often than not reaped rich dividends. So, while Kuldeep was going for runs, Kohli could have resorted to Jadhav for an over at least in a bid to break the partnership. On the flip side, it also went against India's plans as Kohli had to throw the ball to the duo of Kumar and Bumrah even before the slog overs arrived.