One bad match doesn’t define a series, least of all a dead-rubber game. India had already sewn up the series against New Zealand, emphasised their supremacy as the two-time defending world champions, their defiance in pulling games from their brink and their supreme knack of elevating a routine win into a victory march. But the 87-run defeat in the failed pursuit of 260 , inconsequential though in the context of the series, was a tear on their cloak of invincibility.

T20s nights are prone to such wild fluctuations, but the manner they unravelled would hurt them. Some passages would stick out like a lurid fever nightmare when the series ends on Sunday. Like their abject helplessness during the assault of Glenn Phillips and Michael Bracewell. Six overs that bled 113 runs, nine sixes and eight overs, was one of the most horrible passages in the country’s T20 history. The chase fell apart in the first over itself, when India lost the wickets of Sanju Samson and Ishan Kishan.…