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The move to grow extra inch of grass by New Zealand cricket board, on advice of captain Brendon McCullum, backfired big time as he lost the toss yet again against MS Dhoni the Indian captain. New Zealand batsmen found Indian bowlers, especially Ishant Sharma, too hot to handle and were unable to cope up with the pace and bounce generated from lanky fast bowler. The spell reminded of Ishant Sharma Vs Ponting in Australia.

Ishant Sharma had something to hit back at crictics

This sort of day must open the eyes of people like Mike Hesson who talked of testing Indian batsmen on green surfaces. Now he has to explain how inept his own batsmen were on such a pitch. He also must know that Indian seamers do a fine job when they get some assistance from the pitch. As for Team India, they need to be patient tomorrow during the first hour and then try to build a healthy first innings total. A lead of 100-150 is what is needed if they want to put pressure on NZ. Indian bowlers have delivered and now it is the batsmen who must stand up and put a good price on their wickets to enable Team India achieve the elusive test win.
New Zealand finished with 192 runs in board at the end of first innings, but India we sitting in a commanding position at the end of day's play at 100 runs for loss of just 2 wickets, thanks to brilliant 71 not out from Shikhar Dhawan. Murali Vijay was bit unlucky, again, to got out gloving the ball while leaving it at a personal score of 2. Cheteshwar Pujara tried to hang in there but couldn't handle the swing from Trent Boult and was trapped plumb in front of wickets as he was out LBW (Leg Before Wicket) at the score of 19 runs.

The scorecard, India vs New Zelaland 2nd test match, Wellington at the end of 1st day's play looked like this:

India vs New Zealand, cricket scorecard, stumps 1st day 2nd test 2014 at wellington

Earlier the day belonged to  ever criticized Ishant Sharma who made an immediate impact after Zaheer Khan, the most experienced bowler in current Indian lineup wasted the new ball and again did not manage to pick up a single wicket. His time at international level seems to be over and may be Umesh Yadav must be given a chance to perform.

Ishant Sharma has had a tough time. Critics have been after him as his returns in test cricket haven't been up to the expectations. There has been questions asked of him and his inability to produce spells like he produced at start of his career. Ishant Sharma so far has taken 158 wickets at a high average of  37.63 in 54 test matches. India looked at him as a future spearhead, sometime in past, but he hasn't quite lived up to the expectations. Although it will be only fair to say that he has been wasted by making him play on dead pitches in India and where spinners has more part to play with bowl then the fast men. Also captains haven't even given him opportunity to bowl at lower order batsmen in India. This is a part of reason of high average. Most overs, in India, are bowled by spinners and hence seam bowlers don't have opportunity to pick many wickets. This is quite different from other parts of world. Recently we saw in South Africa, where Dale Steyn wen wicket-less for most part of the match but he ended up with few wickets as the captain allowed him to polish off the tail.

The reactions from cricket fans are always interesting, and lets read some of them.

IndianSRTFan: "Good performance by India. The bowling unit was disciplined and Ishant and Shami have bowled very well. It is easy to overlook Zak's contribution but he didn't allow NZ openers to get away with a brisk start. Though India would dearly love some early wickets from him, his influence on other two bowlers was there too see particularly with him walking up to Shami and Ishant whenever they bowled too many boundary balls.
India has a hidden advantage here (at least in tests). Because it doesn't appear formidable at the first glance, the opposition batsmen are trying to dominate the Indian bowling attack almost from the word go. Indian bowlers have smartly used that to their advantage. In last 5-6 innings this has happened thrice. They are certainly far from consistent but there's a potential for a good pool of 5-6 fast medium bowlers all with different strengths. Batting is strong and with experience and a good varied bowling attack oversees wins will come. But we need to be patient here."

gundapps wasn't impressed with Zaheer Khan and rightly so, he says: "Good day for India - well played. However can't help but think that the Indians could have got NZ all out well below 150 had they included either Pandey or Bhuvi in place of Zaheer (he was quite unimpressive in these most helpful conditions). India might yet rue this selection blunder before they see the last of this Test since the conditions are such it is quite possible they may not get much of a lead in the first innings and will have to bat last."

Even after good bowling day there was bit of indiscipline. To get Kane Williamson out twice on no-balls is not misfortune. It is lack of basic discipline amongs't fast bowlers. Coaches have to stop them from bowling anything close to a no ball in practice if they are to avoid such spurious 'misfortune'.

Kapil Dev bowled only 23 no balls in his entire career in Test matches. That is less than one no ball in 500 deliveries ? 1 no ball every 6 Test matches. This has nothing to do with pace and all to do with discipline. Kapil's 0.18% of no balls is among the best since these were credited to bowlers and therefore records available.

Even Anil Kumble bowled 8 times more no balls than Kapil at 1.53 % and Shane Warne five times more at 1.03% .

Brett Lee bowled 640 no balls while taking 310 test wickets while that terror of a toe crusher from Pakistan, Waqar Younis bowled only 45 while taking 373 !

Richard Hadlee hardly EVER bowled a no ball. What misfortune are we talking about ?