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Indian pacer Harshit Rana made the new ball do the talking during his fiery opening spell in the 2nd ODI against New Zealand at the Niranjan Shah Stadium in Rajkot on Wednesday. Harshit troubled the New Zealand openers with his raw pace and movement, before cleaning up Devon Conway with a peach of a delivery.
Rana drew the first blood for India in the sixth over of New Zealand's 285-run chase in the game. The pacer produced a jaffa to send Conway's stumps crashing. It was a fullish delivery from Rana, angled into the left-hander. Conway failed to read the line, and the lack of feet movement resulted in the ball ripping through his defence.
The off stump was sent cartwheeling as Conway took a walk back to the dressing room after scoring 16 off 21 balls. Rana managed to dismiss the in-form New Zealand opener for the second time in the ongoing ODI series, having bagged his wicket in the first ODI in Vadodara last week.
Rana bowled excellent lengths and got India off to a brilliant start with the early wicket of Conway. However, the hosts failed to capitalise on the strong start as Conway's opening partner, Henry Nicholls, combined with Will Young to steady the ship for the Kiwis with a second-wicket partnership.
Earlier, KL Rahul's brilliant century helped India fight back after a mini top-order collapse to post a challenging total of 284 runs on the board in 50 overs. Asked to bat first, India got off to a strong start with skipper Shubman Gill (56) and Rohit Sharma (24) adding 70 runs for the first wicket.
The partnership was broken in the 13th over after Kristian Clarke dismissed Rohit. India lost the likes of Gill, Virat Kohli (23) and Shreyas Iyer (8) in quick succession to get reduced to 118/4 at one stage. However, a fantastic unbeaten 112 from Rahul and cameos from Ravindra Jadeja (27) and Nitish Reddy (20) helped the hosts post a good total of 284 runs on the board.
