Auckland: India won the series in the third T20I. New Zealand answered in the same language in the fourth. On Friday at Eden Park the hosts piled up 259 for 7, the highest total any team has made against India in the format.
Glenn Phillips made 107 off 49 balls. Michael Bracewell made 65 off 25. Between them they added 115 for the fifth wicket off just 41 balls.
Mayank Yadav had removed Tim Seifert and Daryl Mitchell, and New Zealand were 112 for 4 in the 11th over. That is when the game turned.
Phillips took 32 runs off a single Nitish Kumar Reddy over, hitting 4, 6, 6, 6, 6. The last of those sixes went straight over the sight screen. He reached fifty in 31 balls and his second fifty took 15. The hundred, his third in T20Is, came off 46 balls.
Bracewell was just as punishing. Against left-arm spinner Axar Patel he peeled off 4, 4, 4 and 6 to reach fifty in 18 balls. Against Mayank's pace he twice used the speed, flicking and scooping back-to-back sixes.
Mayank was India's best bowler of the day, hustling batters with deliveries in the mid-140s, but the pace cut both ways. He fell leg before to Prince Yadav after his fifty, which did not slow Phillips down.
New Zealand went from 112 for 4 to 227 for 5 in 17.2 overs, and took 85 off the last five. Phillips fell to Reddy after passing three figures, his work done.
India had taken an unassailable 3-0 lead in the five-match series in the third game, when Abhishek Sharma's hitting carried them to a six-wicket win. The tourists now face a dead rubber with a different kind of pressure: a total to chase, and a boundary count to answer.
In other team news, Prasidh Krishna has been ruled out of the ODI series against New Zealand, and Mohammed Siraj has been added to the India A squad for the second game.