03 March,2020 07:24 AM IST | Christchurch | Vimal Kumar
Gary Stead
New Zealand coach Gary Stead hailed his fast bowling unit for the complete dominance in the two-match Test series. "Yeah, they were relentless. They are all a little bit different, they're all a bit complementary towards each other, so they offer different points of skill that they can bring to the attack. I think they all did that really, really well," said the Kiwi coach.
Despite keeping Virat Kohli unusually quiet in the tour, the New Zealanders are not getting carried away. "Look, I think we were lucky that Virat didn't get going in this series, but again, I go back to, I think, the way that we bowled to Virat and the way that we wanted to bowl to him. We almost executed that a 100 per cent right, so we were obviously delighted to get his wicket cheaply on all occasions. But then, Virat is not the No. 1 batsman in the world for no reason. He's a fine player and I'm sure he will bounce back very quickly," added Stead.
However, New Zealand did realise that winning tosses and playing at home worked to their advantage. The biggest factor was the spicy pitches which exposed the old-age problems of Indian batting. "I think you always try and work out what are your best options to do it. I guess playing on wickets that have some green and movement in them, I guess probably challenged their batsmen as far as you can challenge them compared to what they play at home. I think it's probably in our advantage that we played on wickets that did have a little bit of life in them," he concluded.
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