Every turning delivery was a roaring evidence of spin's sovereignty at Kanpur.

And of India's
dominance at home, celebrating its 500th Test with a stylish win. The hosts were comfortably
superlative, New Zealand not entirely hapless. A young team probed India before surrendering,
not embarrassingly at a fortress, and will now travel to the Eden Gardens rather unscathed in
reputation. They were everything South Africa couldn't be, even in a loss. Kolkata is India's rebel
pitch: never the ready-made turn there - even when the Indian captain wants! - and reverse swing
is forever in attendance. That will be New Zealand's chance, that is if they haven't conceded to
Kanpur's visibly hideous, secretly pretty dustbowl. That's it. Ramakrishnan,Pratyush
Sinha, Sagar Chawla and Sreenivas, our scorer, take leave. Enjoy your Monday blues, ta-ta!
Harsha Bhogle: Meanwhile Ashwin continues to mint wickets. That machine in his yard is doing
double-shifts
Before we sign-off, let's look at a few stats from our man Deepu Narayanan.
Ravichandran Ashwin now has 5 ten-fers, equals Harbhajan Singh. Only Anil Kumble (8) has
more
Most consecutive Tests without defeat for an Indian captain:
18 S Gavaskar
17 Kapil Dev
14 M Azharuddin
11 MS Dhoni/ VIRAT KOHLI *
Biggest wins for Ind vs NZ in Tests (by runs):
272 Auckland, 1968
216 Chennai, 1976
197 Kanpur, 2016 *
172 Bangalore, 1988
Kohli: "The boys applied themselves really well. We were in a spot of bother at times. Initially we
had the momentum with the bat, but a couple of soft dismissals put pressure. Jadeja and Ashwin
added crucial runs to dig us out. Those 30-40 extra runs make a psychological difference. I am
still pretty early in my captaincy career, I look for advice from people around me. There have
been cases where we've gone on one mode and the runs were leaked. One learning that we are
taking forward is when wickets aren't coming, we need to be patient. All the sides that are doing
well around the world have strong lower-middle orders. The tailenders also contribute. That's one
area that we have improved and we need to keep working on because those 30-40 extra runs
could prove crucial. It's been a very good Test match. When New Zealand were batting well on

Day 2, me and Ashwin had a chat about this Test match being an exciting game. We needed to
play at our best to win. Credit goes to New Zealand as well. The reason why this game went to
the second session on the fifth day was because of the character they showed."
Williamson: "The boys were positive throughout the match, but credit to India. They outplayed us
with bat and ball. It was a two session period that the gam