Teams:
India (Playing XI): Rohit Sharma, Lokesh Rahul(w), Virat Kohli(c), Shreyas Iyer, Manish Pandey, Shivam Dube, Ravindra Jadeja, Shardul Thakur, Jasprit Bumrah, Yuzvendra Chahal, Mohammed Shami
New Zealand (Playing XI): Martin Guptill, Colin Munro, Kane Williamson(c), Tim Seifert(w), Ross Taylor, Colin de Grandhomme, Mitchell Santner, Tim Southee, Ish Sodhi, Blair Tickner, Hamish Bennett
Williamson: It was a 50-50 decision with the track being used. We would want to get some runs on the board first and then defend it. The two guys missing out are Mitchell and Kuggeleijn. So we have two seamers, de Grandhomme. It's a fantastic opportunity against one of the best sides, if not the best sides. It's a chance for us to become a better side and execute our plans.
India have won the toss and have opted to field
Kohli: We're gonna have a bowl first. Looks a nice pitch to bat on. It might be hard to pick the ball up initially due to twilight. We're pretty much fine (from the travel) but we're fine now. We've played 50-over cricket (heading to this series) and are ready for T20 cricket. The five guys not playing are Kuldeep Yadav, Navdeep Saini, Sanju Samson, Washington Sundar and Rishabh Pant. The character to bounce back from difficult situations gives us an edge in alien conditions. We just gotta come out and play with belief in our abilities.
Time for the toss. Simon Doull with the two captains and the match referee Chris Broad. Heads is the call from VK, it's a head.
Pitch report: "It's a boundary-hitting ground. No total is unchaseable. Looks a good pitch to bat on. There isn't any grass on the surface. Seamers might not get much help from it. It's a hard deck, so the ball should come on nicely to the bat and encourage strokeplay." reckon Sunil Gavaskar and Scott Styris.
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There is also a big difference between red-ball and white-ball cricket when it comes to New Zealand cricket in recent years. Better batting decks mean a festive mood for batsmen with the short boundary dimensions being another massive sub-plot in the game. Of course, the flip side is that batsmen get carried away by the small boundary size and get overambitious, which again can backfire as we've seen over the years. A batsmen with intent and a clear mindset can easily feast on these decks which could also be a bit tired by now, given that the domestic season has seen quite a few games played. This series will clearly be decided by the side that bowls better. Let's hope that we get a riveting contest today to set the tone for the remainder of this tour. On that note, this is Hari Sadanandan welcoming you all from the Cricbuzz Comm Box for our live coverage.
Right now, the first thing that comes to the mind of the Indian team and its fans when you refer to New Zealand is the World Cup semifinal last year when the Kiwis knocked Virat Kohli's fancied Indian team out of the competition to break a billion hearts. Revenge is an overused word in sport and nothing done later can compensate for an earlier failure. Still, the visitors will be determined to gain some inner peace by having a solid tour wherein the obvious objective will be to tick the boxes across formats in terms of series wins. With this being another World Cup year (T20s), clearly the attention is on the shortest format and that's what we begin this tour with. The hosts are still smarting from their shocking disaster Down Under where they were outplayed by their Trans-Tasman neighbours although that was in Tests. Nevertheless, the scars do remain and the one positive for Kane Williamson is that the T20 squad has plenty of names who weren't part of that series.
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