Pune, Oct 24: New Zealand will look to replicate the approach of the Indian spinners in varying their pace on the ball to get wickets when play resumes on day two of the second Test here, said assistant coach Luke Ronchi.
Washington Sundar (7/59) and Ravichandran Ashwin (3/64) combined to keep New Zealand to 259 in the first innings as India reached 16/1 at stumps the opening day here.“If you notice, for the first couple of sessions, the Indians were bowling quite quick — the spinners — and towards the back end they started to slow their pace,” Ronchi told the media after the day’s play.Ashwin and Washington worked out the plan of varying pace to trigger a New Zealand collapse from being 197/3.While Ashwin took three wickets at the top, Washington claimed the remaining seven to record his best figures in Test cricket.
“That sort of made for variable, a bit more turn and bounce and variable sort of reactions off the surface, so that’s something we can use in our bowling innings, knowing that changes of pace are quite significant,” he added.
Ronchi praised Washington for being consistent with his lengths on the first day to extract the most out of the surface. (PTI)
