113 in 39.3 Overs on a Green Top: India A's Batting Collapse and the Old Shadow of New Zealand Tours

The first hour. The ball is landing on the seam, drifting a fraction outside off, settling in the keeper's gloves — and the scoreboard is only collecting zeros. A collapse on a green top does not arrive shouting. It arrives quietly, through that small gap between the edge of the bat and the ball. After sixteen years of watching cricket from the press box and the boundary rope, one thing I have learned: on a pitch where the ball seams, bad luck and bad technique are indistinguishable. Only the result stays behind.

113 all out in 39.3 overs. This is not a T20 scoreline, yet the number lodges like a splinter. On New Zealand A's home ground, in an unofficial Test, on the eve of the New Zealand tour. Simon Keene 5/24. Zak Gibson with three wickets — Yashasvi Jaiswal, Devdutt Padikkal, Washington Sundar. Four of India's top five were caught by the wicketkeeper or in the slip cordon.

That single sentence is the real story of the day — not the 113, but the shape of the fall.

The name of the fixture hides one word that changes every calculation: unofficial. It means the match is played in Test conditions, with the red ball, at first-class standard — but carries no official Test status. It does not enter ICC records, does not enter a player's Test statistics, does not enter World Test Championship points. Even ICC pitch monitoring and over-rate sanctions do not apply here. For the hosts, this match is a controlled laboratory in which preparing a green top carries no regulatory cost.

New Zealand A used that licence. A four-strong seam rotation — Simon Keene, Zak Gibson, Fraser Sheat, Kristian Clarke. Thirty-nine overs of patience in pushing the ball across the batter. The outcome: 113.

There is a historical layer here that makes the number heavier. India have played 25 Tests in New Zealand — winning five, losing ten, drawing ten. Since 2026, India have won exactly one Test in New Zealand. No series win there since 2026. On the last tour in 2026, not one of four innings crossed 250. The 113 is not an isolated accident; it sits inside a distribution built over half a century.

The question is not whether the number hurts. It is what explanation we are allowed to draw from it.

The failure was not in surviving; it was in converting survival

Look at the arithmetic. Yashasvi Jaiswal 17 off 45, a strike rate near 37.8. Devdutt Padikkal 32 off 77, a strike rate near 41.6. Together, 122 balls for 49 runs. The team batted 39.3 overs at 2.86 runs per over.

Read together, these numbers paint a clear picture: India A's collapse did not happen in the survival phase; it happened in the phase after survival. Early on, the ball was seaming and the batters took their time — the right decision. But when the ball stopped seaming, when the shine left the new ball, nobody took on the responsibility of starting to score. There is no evidence both were dismissed by a fresh-ball spell; the greater cost is that neither could carry the innings into its next stage.

Here the bowlers' data speaks louder than the batters'

Simon Keene's 5/24 is the strongest individual signal in this report. He dismissed the top order and also cleaned up the tail. New-ball movement plus ruthless accuracy at the lower order, from the same spell, is a rare combination.

Zak Gibson's three wickets cannot be waved away as mere support. He removed Jaiswal, Padikkal and Washington Sundar — three of India's four most experienced and most Test-familiar batters. The 113 was produced by the collective depth of New Zealand A's seam attack, not by one hot spell.

The counter-image: 44 off 49

In an innings running at 2.86 an over, Yash Rathod's 44 off 49 — three sixes, three fours, a strike rate near 89.8 — is a glaring anomaly. That is 38.9 per cent of the team total, from one bat. Three sixes in 49 balls on a green top points to two possibilities: a counter-attacking plan specific to him, or a pitch that was distinctly easier during his stay. The second possibility matters more, because it dovetails perfectly with New Zealand A's reply.

A rare but real warning: 1 off 13

Dhruv Jurel made 1 from 13 balls. That is something different from a first-ball duck. Thirteen balls at the crease means an attempt to survive against movement, but no runs came — a technical or decisional block in which the bat stayed almost static. The extra mental load of captaincy is not a trivial factor here, though this remains evidence from a single innings.

KL Rahul, duck. Sai Sudharsan, duck. Washington Sundar, duck. And here a legitimate restraint is required: a single duck on a green top says almost nothing about Rahul's form. It becomes meaningful only if the pattern repeats across two or three innings.

The pitch probably changed in two stages

Look at New Zealand A's reply. A 132-run opening stand, then three wickets in seven deliveries near stumps. At the close, 135/3, a lead of 22.

That shape says one thing: the surface probably assisted at the start of the day and again at the end, and settled in between. So the hosts' 132/0 was no atmospheric miracle — it was the second state of the pitch. And a larger hint follows: if the fourth innings proves easier than the first, India A's route back may not be as steep as it looks from outside.

Still, if the pitch wakes up again on the final day, the second innings is the hardest examination of all. That is the cruel arithmetic of first-class cricket — you get time, but you do not get an advantage.

I look for the human pulse beneath the tactics board. Here that pulse is weak, but it has not stopped.

What cannot be said — and why it must not be said

Two levels must be kept apart. One, India A are not India. Two, an unofficial Test result cannot be judged on the same scale as an official Test result. A-team XIs are built around development, workload management and deliberate experimentation; rotation is normal. So the inference 'India will be bowled out for 113' does not emerge from this innings. The valid inference is different: 'conditions remain India's binding constraint in New Zealand'.

A 22-run first-day deficit in a multi-day match is not a decisive margin. Judging an entire batting unit on one innings is single-innings over-extrapolation — and on a development tour, that is the biggest trap of all.

The trap is subtler because the result of an unofficial match enters no official statistic. Evidence that leaves no record leaves no counter-evidence either. A single failed innings can therefore produce more reaction in a selector's mind than the evidence warrants. The game has no instrument to measure that balance properly.

One more thing is quietly troubling: for a dual-discipline all-rounder like Washington Sundar, a batting failure under a heavy bowling load on a seaming pitch compounds physical stress that can resurface later in another form. That level of warning rarely appears in a match report. It should.

Not the last word, but a door left ajar

The final whistle is never final; it is a door left ajar. In the second innings, India A's real objective should not be the scoreboard but time at the crease — an innings of twenty from sixty balls that carries the team into the fourth day. The true forecast for the New Zealand tour will be written there, not inside the 113.

Empty stadiums do not lack sound; they hold the echo of everyone who left. This 113 is one such echo — provided the second innings does not become another.