Mitchell Santner was not worried about his side soreness vs India as he kept picking off the Indian batsmen one by one.
Mitchell Santner had never picked more than 3 wickets in a test innings. Until yesterday, where he went on to pick 13 wickets in the test.
“I have to mention Mitch Santner…” When discussing New Zealand’s historic first Test series victory in India, Tom Latham interrupted. Latham finally brought up Santner, and he continued for a long time after that. After all, Santner had just ended the Test in Pune with 13 wickets, and he was more instrumental in making history than any of his teammates.
“Felt a bit harder this time,” Santner said when it was his turn to speak, after he had collected the Player-of-the-Match award. “Credit to India the way they came out. We knew they were going to fire some shots; that was probably the best play on that wicket. [Yashasvi] Jaiswal played extremely well. But we were just trying to hang in there and hopefully one had their name on it. Great feeling in the end.”4
For comparison, with five second-inning wickets remaining, New Zealand led by 301 runs at the beginning of the third day on Saturday. Before being bowled out, they contributed another fifty-seven runs. Even the most ardent supporters of India wouldn’t have supported their team to win on the dangerous surface, but Jaiswal stormed to a swift half-century. Shubman Gill shared Jaiswal’s optimism following Rohit Sharma’s second cheap fall in the Test. India was going at over a run a ball for a while.
“We knew they were going to come out pretty hard; didn’t realise they were going to come that hard,” Latham said. “But we obviously managed to get the breakthroughs when we needed.”
“In the first innings, he [Santner] was absolutely fantastic. He’s been around the group for a long time and to finally hit a break and bowl the way he has, not only in the first innings but in the second innings, he bowled fantastically well. The credit has to go to him,” Latham said.
It is somewhat uncommon for someone who is primarily a short-format bowler to bowl as many overs as Mitchell Santner did. Prior to this test, Santner had a first-class best of 8 for 153 and a match best of 6 for 93. His only five-for in first-class cricket was this one. He ultimately had to bowl 48.3 overs across the two India innings in this situation. He was experiencing pain in his side at the time.
“It’s a bit strange for me [to bowl that many overs],” he admitted. “My side’s a little sore. Must be the spike in my workloads – 20-odd overs out there,” he said, only half-joking. “I felt it a little bit early on in my spell, but I guess in that kind of situation you just want to keep going. Every time I got a wicket, it felt a little better.
“I guess every time you take wickets, you get a little bit of confidence. A few wickets under your belt is always nice. The belief… kind of land the ball on the same spot for a long time, the odd change of pace, and yeah, that’s all we’re trying to do as a spin unit.”