Nobody at Seddon Park saw a single ball on Tuesday. That is the whole story of the third ODI, and it is also the story of a series India have now won.
Hamilton had been threatening this all week. The rain that chased the first two ODIs across the Tasman followed the teams to Seddon Park, and this time it did not leave a gap big enough to play through. By the time the umpires called it off, just after 6.45 pm local time, the ground was soaked, the covers were back on, and a sell-out crowd was filing out of a stadium that had hosted a toss and nothing else.
The result, if you can call it that, is an India New Zealand ODI series win sealed without a ball bowled. India lead 2-0 with two matches still to play, and New Zealand can no longer catch them.
The day that never got going
The Indians arrived at the ground around 1.30 pm local time to rain. For hours, that was the whole programme. The covers came off around 4 pm, an hour after the scheduled start, and both teams began warming up. The toss was set for 4.32 pm.
Shubman Gill called tails, won it for the seventh consecutive time on this tour, and chose to bowl. He had barely started walking back toward the dressing room when the rain returned, before he had even crossed the 30-yard circle, according to the Deccan Herald’s account of the day.
Officials cut the match to 40 overs a side and waited. The rain kept coming in waves, heavy, then light, then heavy again, and the outfield never dried enough to risk a game. With about 70 minutes still left before the 7.50 pm cut-off for a 20-over contest, the umpires gave up. The BCCI confirmed the abandonment on social media shortly after.
It was not the first time Hamilton has done this to these two teams. When they last met here in 2022, the match was washed out after just 12.5 overs. Seddon Park owes India a full game.
Two matches left, and a new captain
The series moves to Mount Maunganui now, where the final two ODIs will be played on November 13 and 15 at Bay Oval. The weather forecast there is kinder, according to Moneycontrol’s live coverage, and both sides will finally get a full game to argue over.
India will look different when they get there. Shreyas Iyer takes over as captain for the last two matches, with Gill and KL Rahul leaving to join the Test squad ahead of the Tests starting November 19. It is a sensible call, and it also hands Iyer a free hit: the series is already won, so he can play the two games as auditions for the bigger assignments coming.
New Zealand, meanwhile, have a different problem. Two games to save face, a home record in pieces, and a batting order that has not fired all series. The rain saved them from a third straight defeat in Hamilton. It will not save them in Mount Maunganui.
What this India New Zealand ODI series win actually means
Start with the number that will sting in the New Zealand dressing room. The washout ended the hosts’ run of 11 consecutive bilateral ODI series wins at home, the second-longest such streak in men’s ODI history, according to the Deccan Herald. That is not a record you lose because of one bad afternoon. You lose it because the team across from you kept winning the games that did get played.
And the games that got played were not comfortable for New Zealand either. Rain touched all three matches in this series. The opener in Auckland was settled by the Duckworth-Lewis-Stern method after Kohli’s 74 set up a five-wicket win. Wellington was stranger still: India were 113 for 7 chasing 134 when the rain ended it, and the four-run win in Wellington came down to the DLS arithmetic.
The pattern across the two completed games is hard to miss. New Zealand have been bowled out for 185 and 134. Their batters have not lasted 50 overs once. India’s young seamers, Gurnoor Brar chief among them after his 4 for 30 in Wellington, have done the damage while the senior names have mostly watched from the other end.
That is the detail the scorecards hide: this is a series India are winning with a young attack doing first-string work.
So here is the question the last two games have to answer. India have won this series without ever really being tested with the bat. If New Zealand finally post a score, do this young attack and this shuffled batting order hold up? Hamilton never gave us the answer. Friday might.