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

Trent Boult wrecks havoc, as expected

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.