New Zealand v India, 2020: 3 key reasons why India lost the ODI series
India haven't won a bilateral ODI series in New Zealand in 11 years and it looked like the record was about to be rewritten as Virat Kohli’s men were flying high after a 0-5 whitewash in the recently concluded T20I series.
But one of the famous cliches -- cricket is a great leveller -- came true as the hosts took an unassailable 2-0 lead with one more match to go. New Zealand have had a terrific run in this format and once again raised their standards to topple a very confident Indian side.
Even though Kohli said that ODI format is not too relevant in this calendar year, this series loss, which is India’s first in any format since the semi-final loss in 2019 World Cup would have come as a surprise and could cause an impact in the Test series to follow.
So where exactly did the men in blue go wrong? Let us look at the three key reasons why India are down 0-2.
#1 Team combination
The inclusion of Kedhar Jadhav in the playing XI seems a strange one because of a couple of reasons. One, he might not be in the the scheme of things when the 2023 World Cup comes along and two, his part time off-spin, for which he is supposed to be included will not be effective on good batting tracks and small grounds.
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The reason given for Jadhav’s inclusion by captain Virat Kohli is that he can offer some part time off-spin bowling but the fact that he hasn’t been called upon in both the games makes the decision look strange.
With Jadeja in great form with the bat, the left hander could easily be slotted in at No 6 and that means India can go in with extra specialist bowler, which is very important in these conditions. The other way to go about is to include Manish Pandey which could have given the right hander more experience going forward.