'Batting on a Trampoline': Daryl Mitchell Blames Unpredictable Surface for Wellington Collapse Against India

New Zealand’s collapse for 134 in the second ODI against India in Wellington on Saturday came on a surface Daryl Mitchell likened to “batting on a trampoline,” as unpredictable bounce and poor strike rotation left the hosts struggling for control. Mitchell top-scored with 55 off 104 balls in an innings shaped more by survival than fluency.

The right-hander made clear the problem was not only the loss of wickets. He said New Zealand never felt sure how high the ball would come through, which made it hard to settle and even harder to keep the scoreboard moving.

That left 134 feeling light on a difficult wicket. Mitchell’s resistance got New Zealand past 130, but the innings never gathered momentum and India were left chasing a modest target. Despite top-order stumbles during the chase, India reached 113/7 in 26 overs before rain halted play, securing a 4-run victory via the DLS method and extending their series lead to 2-0.

Trampoline Pitch

Mitchell did not dress it up.

“It’s pretty challenging out there. Obviously, we’d always like a few more, but yeah, it’s like batting on a trampoline at times. We weren’t quite sure what height the ball was going to come through at. We scraped. We tried to do all we could and hopefully something special with the ball and you never know,” Mitchell told the broadcasters after New Zealand were bowled out.

That summed up the uncertainty New Zealand faced through the innings. Mitchell said the batters were never fully sure how high the ball would rise, and that made strokeplay risky.

New Zealand still tried to push on. But Mitchell conceded they would have wanted more runs on the board than 134.

Strike Rotation Issues

The surface hurt them in another way.

“All of us found it really hard to rotate the strike as well, and especially being, I guess, a drop-in with no pitches either side. It’s really hard, I guess, to drop and run and it just stops. So you add that to the bounce, sometimes, yeah, the only best option was to try and give it a hoe and see what happens,” he added.

Mitchell’s explanation pointed to a specific problem with the Wellington strip. He described it as a drop-in pitch with no pitches either side, which made soft hands and quick singles difficult to execute.

That mattered as much as the bounce. When the ball stopped after being nudged into the infield, New Zealand could not rotate strike often enough to break the pressure.

Partnerships And Recovery

Mitchell tried to work within that limit.

“Yeah, I guess just trying to stick to your strengths, and for me, it was when I kind of tried to get a read on what they were trying to do. I was trying to maximise that, but yeah, obviously we wanted to keep extending partnerships as well, and that was probably the challenge, because every time we felt like we got a partnership, we’d lost the wicket,” the all-rounder said.

That pattern ran through New Zealand’s innings. Just when the hosts looked ready to settle, another wicket broke the stand and pushed them back again.

Their best passage came after a poor start. New Zealand slipped to 53/5 before Mitchell and Mitchell Santner added 59 for the sixth wicket, the hosts’ most productive stand of the innings.

That partnership gave the total some shape. Mitchell’s 55 helped New Zealand cross the 130-run mark, but the recovery did not last and the innings ended at 134.

Bowling Hope

Mitchell still saw a route back.

“Yeah, look, there’s plenty there, first and foremost. Obviously, there’s not the run-rate pressure that we would have liked, but yeah, if we can knock off a couple early, get into the middle order, you never know what can happen,” he said.

His message was simple. New Zealand did not have the cushion they wanted, but early wickets could still drag India into a contest. While New Zealand did managed to trigger a top-order wobble by reducing India to seven wickets, the rain intervened just in time for India to scrape through on DLS.