The oldest cliche in the cricket handbook — it is never over until the last ball is bowled — came true for India on Wednesday.

India’s win in the third T20I in Hamilton seemed improbable when Kane Williamson was batting. Then, New Zealand shot themselves in the foot. You can usually guess the state the match is in for India going by how Virat Kohli’s on-field demeanour is. In the final stages of New Zealand’s run-chase, Kohli stood in the deep, staring into the distance, hands in his pocket and no emotion on his face. He has seen enough cricket in his life to know that New Zealand were going to win the match and stay alive in the series.

And then, the match came alive. And how.

Mohammed Shami took two wickets when New Zealand needed two runs off four balls. He first dismissed Kane Williamson on 95. He then surprised Tim Seifert with two short balls, both of which beat the bat and one of them resulted in a stolen bye. And then, off the last ball, he rattled the stumps and Ross Taylor was left walking back to the pavilion with a wry smile on his face. New Zealand were, inexplicably, in a Super Over again: their third in the last seven months.

It ended in another heartbreak.

Kane Williamson masterclass

Keeping with the recent tradition of out-niceing (yes, that’s not a word) Williamson and New Zealand, Kohli said after the match, “I told our coach that they deserved to win. The way Kane [Williamson] was batting, on 95; feel bad for him. I know what it’s like to play those knocks when things don’t go your way.”

He is right, though. When almost every other New Zealand batsman struggled for timing, Williamson looked like he was having a net session at times. He was picking the gaps on the field like it was the easiest thing in the world and hardly looked flustered as he went about overhauling the target almost single-handedly. He hit eight fours and six sixes, while the rest of his teammates combined to hit six fours and three sixes.

Especially brilliant was Williamson taking on Jasprit Bumrah, who had a night to forget (conceding 45 runs in his four overs and then 17 in the Super Over). In a match filled with some sensational strokeplay, where the ball travelled past the fence regularly, the shot that stood out was Williamson playing the perfect leg glance to the almost perfect yorker from Bumrah, picking the ball from middle stump and sending it fine for four in the 19th over.

But...

New Zealand’s choke

...it is unfortunate that an innings of the quality we saw from Williamson had to end in a losing cause. But after having played almost flawless cricket through his innings, the otherwise unflappable Williamson played a horror shot to a short and wide ball from Shami.

From there on, it was a case of experienced players failing to deliver the telling blow for the hosts.

After Williamson’s brain-fade, Ross Taylor played on to a ball in the slot from Shami when all needed to do was, perhaps, tap and run. And come the Super Over, Tim Southee — the leader of the bowling unit — showed again why he is not quite a force to be reckoned in the shortest format. We have seen it in the IPL for Royal Challengers Bangalore and for New Zealand more recently in the Super Over against England.

Three of the New Zealand veterans had chances to win the match for their side; all three fell short.

India’s fielding struggles

At what point do India’s struggles on the field go from just a poor phase to a serious problem? When he was stand-in captain for the Bangladesh T20I series, Rohit Sharma acknowledged his team was poor on the field. When he returned to lead the side against West Indies, Virat Kohli conceded that his team was not living up to the standards they have set for themselves. And once again in this series, we have seen sitters being dropped and ground-fielding swing between the extremes. There is no doubting that there are some legitimate contenders for all-time best India fielders in this side but the consistency has gone from India’s high benchmark.

Ravindra Jadeja dropped a sitter, Virat Kohli should really reconsider standing in the slip and Shivam Dube and Shami provided a throwback to the 90s when India had fielders to be hidden on the cricket ground with repeated misfields. By a rough count, India conceded at least four boundaries for free to New Zealand. That’s 16 extra runs right there.

There is a school of thought that a good T20 side does not have to be great at fielding. Maybe so. But if India did end up losing this match, the fielding would have played a significant part.

Rohit Sharma’s brilliance

For the first two balls he faced in the Super Over, Rohit Sharma tried to send the ball from New Zealand, across the Tasman sea to Australia. He was losing his shape as he went for power: that is exactly what he does not do while hitting sixes for fun in white-ball cricket. But then, a switch flipped in his head and he must have remembered his own advice. It was about holding the shape, trusting his technique and timing over power. And he hit what would go down as two of the most popular sixes in a six-filled career off the last two balls to win the match for India in what was their first-ever Super Over.

On Wednesday, Sharma became the fourth Indian opener to score 10,000 international runs. But his innings in the first half of the day is something we are used to seeing from him. A superb 65 off 40 balls where he timed the ball as well as Williamson did later for New Zealand. But this night will be remembered for his heroics at the end.

As he sat beyond the boundary line beaming with pride and joy at pulling off the run-chase, one could not help but think back to the day he was asked to open the batting for India in 2013 by MS Dhoni. That moment has changed Indian cricket in ways few would have even imagined.