113 All Out: India A Batting Collapses at Start of New Zealand Tour, but the Real Question Is the Senior Side

113/10 in 39.3 overs, 2.86 runs per over. That was the first number on the notebook when I opened it at the data desk in Bangalore. India A’s innings lasted less than a session. The scoreboard says 113 all out; the footnote says five ducks and only four double-figure scores. In the tour-opening unofficial Test against New Zealand A, the score is a defeat. For me, it is an audit report of the new ball in the first session. I learned in 2026, hand-coding 1,214 shots from the Russia World Cup, that a big score often hides a smaller story. Here the smaller story ended in 39.3 overs.

This is an A-team first-class match, not a full international Test. The red-ball logic still applies: win the session, survive the new ball, build a first-innings base. KL Rahul, Sai Sudharsan and Washington Sundar fell for ducks. Dhruv Jurel made 1 off 13, Yashasvi Jaiswal 17 off 45, Devdutt Padikkal 32 off 77. Yash Rathod’s 44* off 49 balls, at 89.8, dragged the total to 113. Simon Keene took 5/24 for New Zealand A. In reply, New Zealand A reached 135/3 at stumps, built on a 132-run opening stand. India A’s seamers took three wickets in seven deliveries late in the day. The toss is not stated in the source, so the full accounting of first-session pressure remains incomplete.

The data chain is clear. A total of 113 in 39.3 overs means India A never built a partnership. Five ducks and four double-figure scores mean wickets fell in clusters. Most of the top five were caught behind or in the slips, a direct signal of seam and swing with the new ball. The centre of India A’s collapse was the first-session new ball, not the pitch itself. Keene removed Sudharsan and Jurel cheaply, then cleaned up Nabi, Akash Deep and Mukesh Kumar to break the tail. It was a spell in which the bowler received helpful conditions and did not waste them.

Rathod’s innings stands apart. Jurel’s strike rate of 7.7, Jaiswal’s 37.8 and Padikkal’s 41.6 show a top order that stayed at the crease without scoring. Rathod chose attack. *His 44 was a counter-attacking outlier inside a passive collapse, not yet a certificate of class.** A single innings can lie; a season rarely does. The next signal will come in his next two or three red-ball innings, when bowlers test his boundary reliance. Padikkal’s 32 off 77 was a survival effort, not a match-shaping one.

Blaming the pitch is the easy conclusion. New Zealand A’s openers put on 132, so the surface was not unplayable. The green top helped in the first session, then batting became easier. A more precise reading is this: India A lost the new-ball examination, not the whole-match pitch battle. The broadcast booth hears noise; the notebook hears patterns. Here the pattern is the first session.

The wider record points the same way. India have won 5 of 25 Tests in New Zealand, lost 10 and drawn 10. They have no away Test win there since 2026, and only one Test win in New Zealand since 2026. On the 2026 tour, India did not pass 250 in four innings. So 113 is not a new crisis; it is a recurrence. The shock is a base-rate event, not a sudden break. Even so, A-team and senior-team datasets should stay separate. This is a warning signal, not a senior-team verdict.

The next signal will come in the senior side’s first innings. Watch the top five’s strike rate, the proportion of balls left to the keeper and slips, and the wicket rate in the first 15 overs. India A’s seamers took three wickets in seven deliveries late, showing Indian bowlers can exploit these conditions. The success metric on this tour may be avoiding an innings defeat and securing draws, not chasing wins. If the senior top order also falls to 40/3 in the first session, will we blame the pitch again?