India defeated Newzealand by 58 runs in the 3rd odi at Christchurch to gain a 2-0 lead in the 5-match series with the 2nd odi called off due to heavy rain.Newzealand surely missed the services of their captain Daniel Vettori who missed this match as his wife is expecting their first child.Hence Bredon McCullum took over the captaincy for the first time and put India to bat first after winning the toss.He would have regreted this decision later as India went to score 392 in their 50 overs.
India for the first time in the series lost Sehwag quite early for just 3 runs.Gambhir who came next also couldn't contribute much and departed quite early.Then Sachin and Yuvraj put up a wonderful partnership to take India past 200 in the 31st over.Both ammased 69 runs in the batting powerplay which really hurt Newzealand.Yuvraj then fell after making 87 runs but Sachin continued and went on to make his 43rd odi century.With useful contributions from Dhoni and Raina,India scored 392 runs in their alloted 50 overs.
Newzealand gave a tough fight by scoring 166 runs in only 22 overs and looked like taking the game away from India.But then McCullum got out when he was on 78 and then all remaining players failed to make any contribution and apart from Jesse Ryder who scored his maiden odi century there was no positive batting from any batsman.Kyle Mills then provided some joy for Newzealand spectators by scoring a quickfire 54 but that was not enough to overhaul the indian total 392.For India Zaheer khan,Yuvraj and Harbhajan Singh picked up 2 wickets each.
Sachin Tendulkar was declared Man of the match for his smashing 163 off 133 balls which included 16 fours and 5 sixes.It would be interesting to see whether Sachin and Vettori will be available for the next game.
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