Cricket: Dire result against the spinners is nothing new

Kane Williamson survives an appeal last night as New Zealand tried to save the first test. Photo / AP

Anyone aghast at New Zealand's bereft first test display against India should take a flick through their history books.

This is not fresh territory for New Zealand teams on the sub-continent.

They've won two tests out of 30 in India, none since 1988, but have managed to be hard to beat in recent times. That charge could hardly be levelled at them over the four days in Hyderabad.

No one should have been surprised at the state of the first test pitch. Some New Zealand players evidently wondered aloud before the start how it would play. If true, dear oh dear.

When the 1988 side arrived at Bangalore for their first test, they pondered their best XI and included both spinners, John Bracewell and Evan Gray. India included four. They knew the score and when Dilip Vengsarkar won the toss, the game was up almost as soon as it began.

New Zealand's inadequacies against top class spin - and in Ravi Ashwin, in particular, and Pragyan Ogha, India have a couple of class operators - are nothing new.

Techniques are awry. Trying to play around the front pad is fraught with danger at any time.

Playing from the crease when conditions favour the spinners is simply delaying the inevitable, especially when India had the first innings runs in the bank to allow MS Dhoni to ring the batsmen with five or six close catchers.

New Zealand's batsmen were reluctant to get down the pitch, to try and at least to make the spinners think. It suggests a lack of confidence in their abilities. Perhaps they anticipated a shellacking if they were seen to be batting in what might have been deemed an overly cavalier style.

But surely better by far to at least be seen taking the fight to their manifestly better-equipped hosts.

Certainly they got no favours out of the absence of the Decision Review System.

Martin Guptill's second innings lbw decision may have been marginal, but he didn't help his cause by not offering a shot; luckless Brendon McCullum, having shown commendable graft, was dudded by umpire Steve Davis when a replay would have shown up a fat inside edge; twice new coach Mike Hesson felt moved to hurry to the match referee's box after replays found in favour of catches by Indians close to the grass.

One looked fine, the other possibly iffy. The conversations may have been perfectly amicable, but running to the bosses' door midway through your first test is not the best look. Nothing was to be gained from that. A chat behind closed doors at the end of the day would have been a better option.

New Zealand's fielding so let the side down in the first half of the test, that the chances of surviving the contest were always slim once 12-wicket twirler Ashwin marked out his run.

Will Bangalore's pitch be different? It tends to offer more help for the seamers, but New Zealand must consider playing legspinner Tarun Nethula. Okay, India's batsmen play spin in their sleep but if he's not to be tried why is he there?

Nethula won't fix the fact that New Zealand's batting tail resembles that of a monkey; long and skinny.

But showing at least that they have adopted some positive policies, the sort of which Hesson talked before Hyderabad, would be something.