113 All Out in 39.3 Overs: India A Batting Collapses on Green Top, New Zealand A Reach 135/3 at Stumps

Before the third innings began I wrote a line in the notebook: India A, 39.3 overs, 113 runs, ten wickets. That number, on its own, says little. The line beneath it says more — 2.86 runs per over. A sub-three run rate in red-ball cricket is no crime; on a green top it can even be the correct plan. The real question is that in 237 deliveries only four batters reached double figures and five went back on zero. Low runs with low survival is not restraint. It is a collapse.

The notebook began where the broadcast microphones stopped. Television gives you the scorecard; it does not tell you what the wickets looked like. In this innings the top five produced almost the same picture — catches between keeper and slip. When four of the top five are caught behind, the ball is seaming and the footwork is late. That is not a technique failure. It is a timing failure, and specifically a first-hour one.

Format first, conclusions second

This is the opening fixture of a New Zealand tour, India A against New Zealand A, an unofficial Test — red-ball, multi-day, second-tier. The four-day logic applies. Every inference about the senior XI gets flagged as an extrapolation. That distinction is not housekeeping. It is the difference between a finding and a headline.

A green top, a new ball and a morning session explain this innings. Five ducks and four double-figure scores mean seven batters did not reach ten. That happens when two or three wickets fall together inside the first ten or twelve overs and the rest inherit the same uncertainty. KL Rahul, Sai Sudharsan and Washington Sundar all made zero. Dhruv Jurel, captaining here, made 1 off 13 balls — thirteen balls of occupation at a strike rate of 7.7. Yashasvi Jaiswal made 17 off 45 (37.8), Devdutt Padikkal 32 off 77 (41.6).

Strike rate as a diagnostic, not a statistic

Read those three numbers separately and nothing emerges. Read them together and one thing does: there was no clear plan to score. A batter who cannot decide which ball to leave and which to play ends up playing balls without collecting runs. And when runs do not come, the pressure to hit one ball grows — and that ball becomes the wicket.

Padikkal's 77 balls is the most important number in this innings precisely because it is the least discussed. An unplayable surface does not let anyone face 77 deliveries. The pitch was condition-dependent, and it eased. The support is on the field: New Zealand A's openers put on 132 for the first wicket. You cannot call a pitch unplayable when the opposition's opening pair has just batted a session and a half on it.

Here is the arithmetic that matters. Of 237 deliveries, roughly 184 were faced by four batters — Jaiswal (45), Padikkal (77), Yash Rathod (49) and Jurel (13). The other seven wickets fell in about 53 balls. This was not a slow strangulation. It was a new-ball ambush, followed by a middle order asked a question it could not answer.

Rathod's 44 not out: valuable outlier, not yet evidence

Rathod made 44 not out off 49 balls at a strike rate of 89.8 while wickets fell around him. Of those 44, 30 came in boundaries — three fours and three sixes. That is not the arithmetic of survival; that is a deliberate attempt to break the bowler's rhythm, and on the day it worked.

Honesty here is cheap and necessary. It is one innings. A counter-attacking 44 is a form signal, not a class certificate, and the likelihood of a single A-team highlight converting into sustained international output is low. What I cannot separate is intent from luck. My own rule for such knocks: look at whom the runs came against. Runs inside the frontline seamer's spell are a decision; runs against the change bowler are an accident. That breakdown is not in this report, so I will leave the box empty rather than fill it with a guess.

Simon Keene's 5/24 is worth reading closely. Sudharsan and Jurel belong to the top and middle order; Nabi, Akash Deep and Mukesh Kumar belong to the tail. A seamer who takes wickets at both ends gives his captain a full day's use. What this match cannot tell us is what Keene does on a flat deck — and that is the more useful question for the Tests ahead.

The 22-run deficit is a misleading number

New Zealand A closed on 135/3, a lead of 22. In pure arithmetic, small. But the scoreboard counts runs, not the value of wickets. The hosts have seven wickets in hand, a 132-run platform already laid, and a surface that was seaming at nine in the morning and quietening by two in the afternoon. In red-ball cricket a first-innings total is priced by what follows it. On that pitch, 113 was under par.

The one genuine positive in India A's day is small and real: three wickets in seven deliveries. With Mukesh Kumar, Nabi, Akash Deep and Anshul Kamboj in the attack, it is at least a sign that Indian seamers can work in these conditions. I will not inflate it. Three wickets in seven balls can be a seam spell or a tired tail. The data does not separate the two.

What the report does not tell us: the toss

The article never states who won the toss. This is not a minor omission. If New Zealand A chose to bowl, then framing India A's collapse as 'ominous' misfiles the fault entirely — batting first is what a side does on a green top when it loses the call. If India A chose to bat, then this is a decision-making error and the accountability changes shape. No narrative about a 'curse' can be built while that box is empty.

My rule on this beat is fixed: diagnosis ends with an accountable party. Here there are three — the team management that sets the first-hour scoring plan, the selectors who sent senior players on an A tour, and the host board that prepares the surface. Naming any of them requires the toss fact first.

The real risk is not 113

India have played 25 Tests in New Zealand: five wins, ten defeats, ten draws — a 20 percent win rate for a side that is globally elite. There has been no away Test win in New Zealand since 2026, and the last series win there was also 2026. The sharpest figure of all: since 2026, India have won one Test in New Zealand. Roughly half a century, one win.

That is a base rate, not an excuse. When an event recurs for decades, it should be modelled as expected rather than shocking. On the 2026 tour India did not pass 250 once in four innings. The next entry in the same ledger reads 113. This is continuity.

So the argument should not be whether India struggle in New Zealand. It should be why. And here I depart from the majority reading. The comfortable explanation — Indian batters cannot play seam and swing — is attractive because it assigns responsibility to nobody. The notebook does not fully support it. The failure here was narrower than technique: it was the decision-making of the first hour. Padikkal survived 77 balls. New Zealand's openers put on 132. The pitch was session-dependent, and the side that spends the first hour merely surviving neither scores nor survives. Jurel's one run off thirteen balls is that trap in miniature.

The second easy conclusion is that an A-team result forecasts the senior side. The squads are different, the contexts are different. The presence of Rahul and Jaiswal in this fixture suggests the A tour is doubling as a red-ball reset window for senior players — an inference, not a confirmed board position. A first-innings duck in a player's first outing of a tour is not a form verdict without fitness and workload data, none of which is present here.

What to track next

I file findings, not forecasts, so three signals only. First, Rathod's next two or three red-ball innings: if the high strike rate persists while wickets fall, that is a plan; if he reverts to 45 on a good surface, that was a day. Second, the senior top order's first-innings strike rate and the share of dismissals to keeper and slip — that is what will tell us whether this was an A-team story or an Indian red-ball story. Third, the 250 line. India did not reach it once in four innings in 2026. One innings past 250 on this tour would bring down a wall.

The scoreboard will keep saying 113. It has no memory of the first hour, only of the runs. One box in my ledger is still empty — the toss. Until it is filled, 113 remains either an accident or a habit.