India captain Virat Kohli's horror tour of New Zealand with the bat ended on Sunday with yet another low score, the batsman managing just 14 in the second innings of the Christchurch Test.
India needed a big innings from the captain but as has been the case throughout the tour, Kohli's footwork failed him as he fell lbw to medium pacer Colin de Grandhomme to leave the Indians struggling at 90-6 in their second essay.
It capped a poor Test series for Kohli who managed scores of 2, 19, 3 and 14 in four Test innings. His average of 9.5 was his second worst effort in a series of two of more matches. Looking at the entire tour, Kohli managed just 218 runs from 11 innings across all three formats with one fifty.
New Zealand left-arm seamer Trent Boult was more than happy that the Kiwis had managed to keep the star batsman quiet throughout the tour.
“Kohli is one of the best players in the world, no doubt about that,” Boult said.
“Obviously, he is a big player for them and we just tried to put enough pressure on him, keep him quiet and soak up those boundary balls, and it was nice to see him make a few errors. We were lucky to get two that lined up and hit him on the pads nicely and it was a good feeling to see the back of him.”
Boult said the Indian batsmen had struggled to adjust to conditions that aided seam bowlers.
“Probably, they are used to playing on low and slow pitches in India and it took time for them to get adjusted. Just like if I bowl in India, it will be foreign conditions for me,” the seamer said.
Boult said he did not mind conditions that helped the quicks after 16 wickets fell on the second day.
“Sixteen wickets, I am not sure if that’s up there with a record in Test cricket in terms of day two but the bowlers obviously pitched the ball up nicely and got rewards. Seeing the ball move around like it did, I feel we are in a decent position,” he said.
Boult is glad the Kiwis bowlers were performing as a unit and not relying on individuals.
“We are all enjoying hunting out there as a pack, getting the ball to move around. I think the bowling unit is very clear about how they are trying to target the opposition.”
On his part, India seamer Jasprit Bumrah said it was not fair to put the blame on India's batsmen for slipping to 90-6 after the bowlers had done well to restrict New Zealand to 235 in reply to the visitors' 242.
“See we don’t play the blame game. In our team, we don’t look at blaming anyone. Some days if as a bowling unit we don’t pick up wickets, then that doesn’t give the batsmen liberty to take our case, isn’t it?” said Bumrah.
