Rahane rues late wickets in attritional day

Those who are not cricket fans sometimes like to laugh at the lack of physicality of Test cricket. But bowling itself is an unnatural act. Human bodies are not meant to hurl round objects accurately at 140 kph across 22 yards without straightening the arm. To do it in temperatures north of 30 degrees centigrade and humidity over 70% over six-and-a-half hours, even with all the breaks, is a mammoth task. To do so with consistent accuracy and skill is what makes cricket. To face this wearing all the armour is not easy either, but it is more demanding on the bowlers, which is why batsmen like to absorb all the pressure before taking liberties. Fatigue is inevitable in the human body.

Fatigue is what Tom Latham spoke of before the Kolkata Test. Fatigue is what New Zealand coach Mike Hesson spoke of when asked why their spinners provided more loose balls in Kanpur. Fatigue is what Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane played on in rescuing India after they had been reduced to 46 for 3.

New Zealand are a wonder of human spirit and strategy. With such low numbers, both in terms of participation and in terms of following, they do a great job of being competitive in cricket. On Friday morning, they were stretched to the limit, losing their best batsman Kane Williamson, and then the toss. The moment they caught their first break of the tour, though, they were all over on it. This pitch had bounce for their bowlers. It had a bit of movement.

New Zealand read it right. Again. They brought in a fast bowler who rarely puts a foot wrong but gets to play only when others are injured. Still Matt Henry manages always to be ready. There was also a spinner in the side who last played three years ago and as recently as last week thought he was done as a New Zealand cricketer. Jeetan Patel reached Kolkata a little over 24 hours before the Test. He came back with experience of bowling in county cricket; he had finished as the joint-highest wicket-taker in this year's county season.

Spirit doesn't beat science, though. Bodies get tired. So when New Zealand had everything going their way, Pujara and Rahane decided to absorb it all. Pujara only went after errors, but went after all of them. There was a time when Pujara had scored 39 of India's 67 runs, having faced 99 of India's 192 deliveries. The value of having tired the bowlers now started showing as the loose balls started to appear. Not too many, but they did.

Rahane spoke of the need for a solid defensive game. "I think your defence is very important on a turning wicket," he said. "If you have faith in your defensive game, nobody can get you out. We did that in the first and second sessions, but in the third session we thought this is an opportunity to score runs. The ball had got old and the bowlers were tired, so we thought that if we could increase the run rate there, we could put pressure on them. It's not necessary to look for boundaries only, but you must have seen that we used our feet to the spinners a lot. So our plan was to disrupt their lines and lengths, because it was easier to play the spinners off the back foot than the front foot."

To cash in on them, Rahane was the perfect man. Not long ago, in the third Test in the West Indies, Rahane had failed to accelerate after getting himself in. He had put himself under pressure, and was dismissed for 35 off 133 balls. India batting coach Sanjay Bangar had said that day that Rahane should have switched gears when he had got himself in. Rahane is not the man to repeat mistakes. And he has gears.

Here he effortlessly switched. You didn't notice them from the shots he played, but every time you looked up at the scoreboard he had moved up a gear. The first 26 balls he faced brought India three runs, the next 30 yielded 14, he scored 18 off the next 24 balls he faced, and by the time he reached his fifty, Rahane had reached a strike rate of 50.

Patel's and Mitchell Santner's fingers would have tired, the relentless Neil Wagner's pace came down, Trent Boult bowled only three overs in that middle session, and Henry only two. This was a period when both sides realised that the new ball was going to be the next crucial play. New Zealand wanted to contain runs, India wanted to deny them this containment. Rahane used his wrists and deftness to beat fielders; Pujara did so too but his strike rate didn't go up as much as Rahane's did.

After the 64th over, in the heat, India finally broke free. Forty runs came in five overs. Pujara scored 19 off 12. This is the time that perhaps Kohli spoke about. Pujara was getting on. The elusive century was within sights, but also he was facing Wagner, who was bowling to a plan that wasn't quite working. He had gone around the wicket, trying to shape the ball away and was looking to make the batsmen hit to that tight ring on the off side. Finally Pujara made an error, finding short cover on the full. Wagner's plan had worked, ten overs before the crucial new ball.

In the end, Rahane was hard on himself and Pujara. "Pujara and myself will take this blame, because we were set," Rahane said. "He got out on 87, and I got out on 77. I think it was our responsibility to carry that partnership forward. See batsmen just need one ball to get out, but I think if between the two of us, if one had made a hundred, maybe our position would have been different. I can't blame anyone else."

New Zealand were back into it, and, with R Ashwin denying them, they finally got their first bit of luck. Ashwin was given out lbw by umpire Rod Tucker with the ball looking likely to slide down. Immediately, though, the same umpire denied them Ravindra Jadeja's wicket. That set up a tantalising first session on day two. New Zealand will be mindful of what happened in the first innings of Kanpur when India's tail scored valuable runs, while they lost their last five wickets for seven runs.

Rahane believes his side will need at least 70 runs from the last three wickets this time. "We lost two extra wickets here. Five wickets would have been ideal on this kind of two-paced pitch. But Jadeja and Saha are batting, and if we get 75 to 100 runs tomorrow, 325-330 will be a good total for the first innings here."