New Zealand coach Gary Stead hailed the current Indian side as a unit that has several match-winners as said the visitors are going to be strong contenders for the remaining fixtures of the tour.
India have had a perfect start in New Zealand having won all three T20Is so far, thus taking an unassailable 3-0 lead in the five-match series.
“I have only been involved for the last 18 months, so I have doubt. They are a very good team. From top to bottom throughout the whole team, they are very strong and are proven IPL match winners and they are going to be the contender of game four and future series,” he said.
Stead, who replaced former coach Mike Hesson to the post in August 2018, also lauded India’s death bowling specialist Jasprit Bumrah saying his side was lucky to have handled the Indian speedster well in the third T20I in Hamilton.
Bumrah had returned expensive figures of 4-0-45-0 before leaking another 17 runs in the super over.
“He is a very tough person to handle I know that for sure. We were lucky last night where we played him really well and that was on the back of Kane Williamson batting for a long time against him. Kane’s innings was outstanding and we will struggle to see (a) much better T20 innings,” Stead said.
New Zealand seemed to be well on course to scale down the 180-run target set by India with Kane Williamson (48-ball 95) anchoring the chase.
However, with nine required off the last over, they could only manage to score eight with Mohammed Shami dismissing both Williamson and Ross Taylor. India then rode on Rohit Sharma’s heroics to seal the super over and the match in their favour.
Stead said the character of rising up to the task in pressure situations makes the Indian side a standout team.
“No doubt that Indian team is playing fantastic cricket at this time. They have IPL competitions where these guys are stars and are used to pressure on a regular basis. But that takes nothing away from them to perform at crunch time. For our point of view, we need to get better,” he concluded.
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