New Zealand sinked India two matches in a row to seal the ODI series with one game still to go. The Kiwi bowlers produced a scintillating effort led by debutant Kyle Jamieson to beat the Men in Blues by 22 runs at the Eden Park in Auckland. Speaking at the end of the game, India skipper Virat Kohli hinted at a change in the playing XI for the final ODI.
Chasing a moderate total of 274 runs, India were never in line for the run-chase. They lost their top-order cheaply as Virat Kohli & Co failed to stitch a partnership. Prithvi Shaw and Kohli threw their wickets after getting settled before Shreyas Iyer played another great hand. However, he failed to convert the half-century before Ravindra Jadeja and Navdeep Saini almost took India home. But the Kiwi bowlers bounced back timely to seal the series as India fell short of 22 runs.
Earlier in the day, the top-order of New Zealand made significant contributions to post a challenging total on the scoreboard. Martin Guptill and Henry Nicholls gave an outstanding start before Ross Taylor played another gem of an innings to lead his side's batting. Taylor was unbeaten on 73 runs while debutant Jamieson chipped in with 25 runs to post 273 runs at the end of 50 overs which proved enough to win the match.
Speaking at the end of the match, Virat Kohli spoke about the positives and hailed Navdeep Saini and Ravindra Jadeja for almost pulling off the miracle. He also spoke highly on Shreyas Iyer, who has been outstanding with the bat in recent times.
"We let things slip away from 197-8 to 270+ in the first half but came back strongly with the second half of our batting. We were in trouble with the bat, but Saini and Jadeja played really well, as did Shreyas," Kohli said.
Furthermore, Virat Kohli also spoke about some changes in the playing XI for the final match of the series as India have nothing to lose in that game. He stated that they will look to express themselves and not bother about the result.
"We could consider changes in the final game, since we have nothing to lose now. We'll play expressive cricket and not worry too much about the result," he concluded.
