"What a win," remarked captain Brendon McCullum, with his eyes glistening.
"It was a gripping Test. While we didn't ram home the advantage in the second innings with the bat, we showed a lot of heart and a lot of character today to continue to bash away and keep fighting hard and get the result in the end."
He was particularly pleased because they were in an almost similar situation against England last year, failing to take the last wicket after setting them a target of 481 runs. "That one hurt a lot because we didn't close it out. But I still saw some characteristics that we could harness and improve on."
McCullum, however, insisted that he didn't regret the decision not to enforce the follow on, despite seeing India come so close to the target. "You can't regret any decision you make, (especially as) you put some thought into it. Specially, when it comes to the follow on, you speak to your bowlers and your senior players.
"Some people have different theories but you try to garner as much majority as you can. Ultimately, someone has got to make that decision and I guess that comes down to me. I made the decision and I never regretted it for a moment. There's no guarantee we would have bowled out India for 100 in their second innings and I said right at the outset that we have got the bowlers to take 20 wickets. It was a matter of trying to give them the most amount of rest to do so and we may have won it more comfortably, but I would hate to see us chase 150-200 on the last day on that wicket with Jadeja coming into play."
He believed that 406 was still a good score, even though they got bundled out for 105 runs in the second innings. "There are only three teams in the history of the game that have chased over 400. It was still a lot of runs on the board but the wicket was starting to play pretty well as well, so it was always going to be a tough ask and we knew that it was going to be a close contest towards the end. It was a matter of trying to work out the ebbs and flows of the game, when to push, when to pull, when to attack at times and defend at other times."
The NZ captain, however, felt that the game was always in their favour. "Even at 220 for 2, I felt we weren't that far away and that if we could get a couple of wickets leading into that new ball, I still felt confident that we were gonna be ok. But then again, my confidence doesn't necessarily marry out with reality at times as well. They put a lot of pressure back on us when Jadeja came out to bat with Dhoni and they played a brand of cricket that I certainly didn't expect them to play at that point in time. That put us under a lot of pressure. Thankfully we absorbed that and got through that tough situation."
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