Team India produced another superb effort with the bat to post a massive total of 347 runs against New Zealand in the first ODI at the Seddon Park in Hamilton. Shreyas Iyer was the anchor-in-chief knocking his maiden century in 50-overs cricket with good support from KL Rahul, who showed good temperament and adaptability to pace the innings.

India came out with a brand new opening pair of Prithvi Shaw and Mayank Agarwal after asked to bat first. The young pair provided a good start adding 50 runs for the first wicket in eight overs in challenging conditions. While the openers looked to make the New Zealand bowlers pay, Tim Southee and Colin de Grandhomme removed the openers to have India at 54 for two in a span of five balls.

Since then, the Men in Blues were in full control with Virat Kohli and Shreyas Iyer knocking off singles and boundaries easily. Kohli was the aggressor while Iyer took some time to settle. Within no time, the India skipper reached his fifty but will curse himself for not converting it to a big score as Ish Sodhi cleaned him up with outstanding delivery.

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Iyer then took the commanding position while KL Rahul, who Kohli wants to get settled in the middle-order. The duo added 136 runs for the fourth wicket to set India for a massive total. Iyer and Rahul both looked convincing in the middle knocking easy runs. Both of them scored individual fifties before Shreyas Iyer went hard for his maiden ODI century.

The batsman from Mumbai brought his hundred before finally getting out on 103 runs from 107 balls including 11 boundaries and one six. Rahul and Kedar Jadhav pulled down the gears to post 347 runs from their 50 overs with the Karnataka batsman unbeaten at 88 runs including six massive hits. Meanwhile, Shreyas Iyer has shown maturity in the middle-order ever since he came into the playing XI since the ICC World Cup.

He has scored runs consistently shouldering the responsibility and looks to solve India’s middle-order problem in the future. As Iyer knocked his first hundred, Twitter was in awe of the dashing batsman who couldn’t stop but praising him.

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