India vs New Zealand | Kane Williamson admits of being 'under lot of pressure' against India
Kane Williamson has praised the Indian bowling attack and admitted that they were put under a lot of pressure in the series. The New Zealand skipper has also added that the pitch for the fifth and final ODI in Wellington was a bit tricky and two-paced, but added that India’s total was a par total.
New Zealand's bowling unit heavily relying on Trent Boult and Tim Southee for a good number of years now, but Southee was well past his prime now and didn’t feature in the India series as well. It was only Boult, who managed to pick more than four wickets in the series (12), but in total contrast, India’s frontline bowlers got the better of New Zealand's batsmen each time they looked threatening, with none of them coinciding more than 5.5 runs per over. They even took 13 more wickets (40) than their Kiwi counterparts (27) in the whole series and Williamson admitted the huge gulf between both the teams and said that India put up a lot of pressure on them.
"I mentioned earlier that the game is about pressure and if you can, as an outfit, you want to put the opposition under as much pressure as you can to challenge decision-making, and when you do that, you tend to pick up wickets and that puts you in a fairly strong position," Williamson said, reported Cricinfo.
"I think throughout this series India were far better at that than us and as a bowling unit they were superb - their accuracy from a seaming and spin perspective did put us under that sort of pressure in which we saw improvements throughout the series but it certainly was something that we didn't start the series well with. We weren't able to soak that up and try and turn up and put it back on them. To be honest, over these five games, we've been put under pressure a lot and it obviously challenges decision-making which although we're on the wrong side of the results 4-1, which India fully deserve."
Coming to the final ODI, India found themselves in huge trouble as they lost top four batsmen, all back to the dressing room with just 18 runs on the board. However, Ambati Rayudu's 90 and Pandya's flourishing 45, in the end, made sure that New Zealand had a good target of 253 to chase down.
"I think it was probably a par total on that surface. It (the pitch) was a little bit variable and probably a little bit two-paced as well. We knew that the Indian bowling attack would maximize what they might be able to get out of it, as they've done in the series. So we knew it'd be a challenge but saying that when it is 250, there isn't the scoreboard pressure, so if we're able to get partnerships then we could take the game deep and we were confident and been able to chase it down.
“But I guess there's a little bit of a theme throughout the series although there were some improving signs today, we just wanted to take them a little bit further. And they were able to pick up wickets at key moments which made life a little bit difficult in that chase. I thought the first half from the bowlers was outstanding and in the last two games they've really stepped up which is pretty nice."
The decision of playing an extra batsman worked well and true for India as Vijay Shankar batted with Rayudu to hold the innings from one end, which gave Kedar Jadhav and Hardik Pandya the much-needed platform from which they took the score past 250.
"It would have been nice to pick up another couple of wickets [after 18 for 4], we obviously spent a lot of resources at the top with seven and six from our front
“We saw some chances, maybe the odd mistake which is nice if it goes your way, but for the large part they were able to soak up that pressure and take the game to a stage where then they could knock some hard runs. [Pandya's] was a fantastic
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