New Delhi: The Indian team had to bear the brunt of a disappointing performance on the sixth and final day of the ICC World Test Championship final in Southampton. The Indian team had to face a crushing defeat at the hands of New Zealand. New Zealand’s team was heavy on the Indian team in every respect. However, due to the flop of the Indian batsmen, India failed to score big in this match and suffered an embarrassing defeat. The batting performance of the Indian team in the second innings was quite disappointing. The entire team was all out for 170 runs. New Zealand got the target of only 139 runs in about 60 overs, which they achieved by losing just 2 wickets in 45.5 overs. In this way, India had to face a crushing defeat by 8 wickets. In this embarrassing defeat for India, captain Virat Kohli, along with Cheteshwar Puraja, fast bowler Jasprit Bumrah came out as the villain. India also proved to be laggy in batting, bowling and fielding.
On the reserve day, the Indian team started playing ahead of 45 runs for two wickets. But captain Kohli, batting irresponsibly, put his bat on Jameson’s outgoing ball and gave a simple catch in the hands of the wicketkeeper. He scored only 13 runs. After that Cheteshwar Pujara, who is called the shield of Team India after Dravid, went on to score 15 runs. Pujara flopped in both innings. Vice-captain Ajinkya Rahane stayed with Rishabh Pant at the crease for some time. But he too could not last long and after scoring 15 runs was out on the ball of Bolt. Rishabh Pant also did not appear in the rhythm. However, there was only one batsman who was seen struggling alone in front of the New Zealand bowlers till the end. He scored 41 runs off 88 balls. None of the other batsmen could stand before the New Zealand fast bowlers and the entire team was dismissed after scoring 170 runs. Tim Southee took 4 wickets for New Zealand.
In New Zealand’s innings, captain Kane Williamson remained unbeaten on 52 runs off 89 balls with the help of eight fours and Ross Taylor scored 47 runs off 100 balls with the help of six fours. Apart from these, Devon Conway contributed 19 and Tom Latham contributed nine runs. Ravichandran Ashwin took two wickets for India. New Zealand had earlier won the ICC Champions Trophy on 15 October 2000, but they have now created history by winning the first edition of the WTC. The wonderful coincidence is that even at that time New Zealand had defeated India in the title match.