While I have no hesitation in congratulating the M S Dhoni and his men for this victory I do not think it is any great historical achievement as is made out in the media which is blaring headlines that we have won there after 30+ years.
In the seventies and early eighties, New Zealand was not considered as a stong team as it is considered now. Before the admission of Zimbabwe and Bangladesh into Test cricket, New Zealand used to be the team considered the weakest amongst the world test teams.
That despite having some great cricketers like Sir Richard Hadley, Glenn Turner, Martin Crowe, John Wright, Mark Greatbatch, Geoff Lawson (thanks Loshan for pointing out the error), Jereme Coney (again thanks to Loshan for reminding this great's name) and Evan Chatfield in their ranks.
Despite being considered as the weakest team amongst the test playing nations, New Zealand always fought hard. Especially in matches against Australia they gave their very best.
I remember their 1981 ODI match in the World Series Cup against Australia in which to avoid a tie (not defeat) Greg Chappell stooped to the level of asking his youngest brother Trevor Chappell to bowl the last delivery underarm. Still it remained that they were lowly ranked as a test playing nation.
Thus, it comes as a surprise to me that India has not won a test match in New Zealand in 33 years.
The last win came in 1976 in Auckland. Going through the scorecard at www.cricinfo.com I noticed some interesting similarities between the current match and the 1976 one.
1. In both the matches New Zealand batted first
2. In both matches India chased down a small score (less than 100) in the last innings.
3. In both matches, in the Indian second innings, the opening batsman taking strike scored the majority of the runs for victory and remained not out. (Sunil Gavaskar with 35 in 1976 and Gautam Gambir with 30 in 2009)
4. In both matches Little masters scored a century in the first innings. In 1976, it was Sunil Gavaskar with One hundred and Six-teen and in 2009, it was Sachin Tendulkar with one hundred and Six-ty.
5. In both matches it was a off-spinner who bundled out the Kiwis. It was Erapally Prasanna with 8 for 76 in 1976 and Harbhajan with 6 for 63 in 2009.
I noticed that it was one of those rare matches in which both the great off-spinners of India Prasanna and Venkat played and Bishen Bedi didn't. In that match the two off-spinners together took 12 wickets, with Prasanna taking 8 wickets in the second innings.
As if it is a repeat of history, in the current win, Harbhajan Singh our off-spinner took 6 wickets.
While in this win Sachin Tendulkar scored 160 in the first innings of this test , in the 1976 match, the original little master Sunil Gavaskar scored 116.
The 1976 match was probably one of the few matches in which Sunil Gavaskar scored a hundred and G R Viswanath failed and still India won the match. :)
This looked odd to me. Hence I wanted to do some number crunching to see the statistics of India - New Zealand matches in the past 33 years and compare the same with the matches played by India against other teams. The following interesting statistics emerged.
Thus, while this win did come after many years, it is not that great history because we have not played often enough against NewZealand to day that we have not won often enough the said team. We seem to be playing more often against Australia and England or for that matter even Pakistan (with whom we have a off on touring relationship) than against New Zealand.
In fact, amongst the test nations that are playing test cricket 32 years back the least we have played is against New Zealand.
In the olden days atleast we used to make it a point to tour New Zealand whenever we toured Australia, combining the tour schedules. Now, since BCCI has become more monied and since travel is not that great a hassle, we seem to have deliberately ignored touring the Kiwis regularly. It might be because the BCCI thinks that a series against Australia, England or Pakistan gives more revenues than a tour to New Zealand.
This thinking is also proved by the fact that we have not been playing many matches even against Sri Lanka which is nearer home - we have played just 29 tests in 26 years.
