Kiwis have claws’ is a headline I remember reading in Sportsweek’s World of Cricket; one of my favourite magazines in my youth. The headline was used for a 1984 piece by well-known statistician BB Mama about how New Zealand are capable of  troubling opposition teams in Test cricket. They thwarted England in the Lord’s Test of 1973, when skipper Bevan Congdon, Mark Burgess and Vic Pollard got centuries in one innings. Nine months later, they beat Australia at Christchurch to square the series. They denied India a series win in 1975-76 and in 1979-80, they beat the West Indies 1-0 before Greg Chappell’s Australians lost to them at Auckland in 1981-82 for another Trans-Tasman squared series in New Zealand.

A year before Mama’s piece, they won their first Test on English soil at Leeds in 1983. That ‘Kiwis have claws’ headline holds true today when the limited overs world of Indian cricket is reeling under India’s maiden ODI series loss to New Zealand at home. Quite clearly, India were outwitted by a spirited side that was not the best ODI crew they would normally put out on the field.