"Lost for words" – Tom Latham reflects on momentous win

Saturday, 26 October was an important day in New Zealand's history, as they secured their first-ever Test series win in India on their 13th visit to the country to play red-ball cricket.

Building on their huge triumph in Bengaluru, the Black Caps secured a 113-victory in Pune to take an unassailable 2-0 lead in the three-match series.

Interestingly, this admirable New Zealand performance came after a 2-0 drubbing they received in Sri Lanka just a month ago.

"I'm sort of lost for words," New Zealand captain Tom Latham was understandably overcome with emotion at the post-match press conference.

"It's obviously an immensely proud moment for this group. I think coming off the back of a Sri Lankan series where we didn't get the results that we wanted to come here and play the style of cricket that we played. We're obviously immensely proud to be in the position of winning two Test matches here.

"A lot of New Zealand teams have come here over the past… I guess to be the first team to win a series over here is immensely special and, yeah, very proud of this group."

Latham was all praise for left-arm spinner Mitchell Santner, who claimed 13 wickets in the match, helping derail India in both innings.

"He [Santner] did a fantastic job, I think obviously the wickets that he got but I think it will go unnoticed the amount of overs he bowled back to back. I think Will [O'Rourke] bowled one over with the new ball from that end and Mitch bowled the rest."

"Someone like that to come and bowl that amount of overs to keep being a threat for that amount of time... I kept trying to take him off but he kept taking a wicket, so I said you can keep going. But I can't praise him enough in terms of what he's done this game," Latham further added.

But it was not only the New Zealand bowlers who impressed; their batters too outplayed India on spin-friendly tracks.

"From our batting point of view, that's all we wanted to do was try to put them under pressure I think we saw a slightly different way that we played yesterday just being a little bit more attacking. We tried to counteract any punch that they threw at us whether it was around the wicket or over the wicket or different field changes," Latham said.

"So obviously it's pleasing that we're in that position where they might have found it a little bit hard. We've certainly been on that side of things before when we've come to these parts of the world where anything you do doesn't work and you do feel under pressure so it's obviously a nice position to be in when you put a score or you get a lead of what we did,"

The third and final Test series will be played in Mumbai from 1 to 5 November. The Test will be important to both teams in their race to the ICC World Test Championship 2025 Final.