After a splendid home season which has helped the Indian team leaps and bounds in balancing their playing XI, Virat Kohli and Co will move to New Zealand for a long tour, featuring five T20Is, three ODIs and two Tests.
This will be India's first assignment abroad since their tour of the Caribbean in August last year. Moreover, the tour assumes a lot of importance since India will have five T20Is to fine-tune their strategies in the shortest format of the sport, with the World T20 scheduled in October this year.
On the Test front, India will renew their quest of becoming an all-weather Test nation, after Virat Kohli led the team to a dramatic 2-1 series win in Australia last year.
The fact that the two-match Test series against the Blackcaps will begin after the Indian team would have spent close to a month playing in New Zealand will be an added boost. It will allow sufficient time for the team to acclimatise, with the limited-overs leg of the tour helping India assess and get used to the conditions.
Incidentally, India's first Test victory away from home came in New Zealand, when it had toured the country in 1967-68. The Indian team, led by Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi, had won the first Test of the series by five wickets and would go on to win the series 3-1, thus making it their first Test series win overseas.
A lot has changed in Indian cricket since that 3-1 series win in New Zealand. India were then led by a maverick in MAK Pataudi, who defied conventions and popular opinion by persisting with playing three Indian spinners on the pacey tracks of New Zealand.
Today, India are led by Virat Kohli, who's the captain across all formats. Under Kohli, the team has found arguably its best crop of fast bowlers, a lethal pace battery which is feared the world over for its incisiveness, variety and bench-strength.
A lot has also remained the same since that first India tour of New Zealand in 1967. Back then, MAK Pataudi helped India believe that winning Tests overseas was possible with the limited resources to play with.
Today, Virat Kohli is doing much of the same, as he aims to script an era where the Indian team can emerge as one which makes a habit of winning away from home, after having them compete well and hard in England, South Africa and Australia, from 2018-19.
While the Indian team had lost the Test series 4-1 in England and 2-1 in South Africa, they broke fresh ground by becoming the first Asian team to win a Test series in Australia, winning the Border-Gavaskar Trophy during their tour of 2018-19.
As we follow Virat Kohli and Co on their tour of New Zealand, here's an interactive quiz, which will test one's knowledge of the Indian team's pursuits in New Zealand over the years, across all formats.
from Firstpost Firstcricketnews Latest News https://ift.tt/2NU5Kei
Posted in Labels: Firstpost Firstcricketnews Latest News
