Team India will kickstart their tour of New Zealand with the T20I series on Friday. The first match will take place at Sky Stadium in Wellington. Hardik Pandya is leading the Men In Blue in this competition and this is also a relatively young squad than what we saw at the T20 World Cup. This looks like India’s attempt to build a squad for the next T20 World Cup to be hosted jointly by Caribbean nations and USA. This squad possesses some great T20 talent in the likes of Rishabh Pant, Ishan Kishan, Sanju Samson and Deepak Hooda.
Ahead of the 1st T20I, Team India attended a nets session and the players could be seen trying to smash the balls out of the park. The BCCI released a video on Thursday in which Pant, Samson could be seen hitting the balls hard in the nets and then trying to clear the ropes with brute power in the middle of the park practice.
Watch Pant, Samson’s big sixes during training here:
TICK..TICK..BOOM__
All charged up for the #NZvIND T20I series opener#TeamIndia , pic.twitter.com/AsNSTeMqq8— BCCI (@BCCI) November 17, 2022
India are coming into the contest after a heartbreaking loss in the T20 World Cup 2022 semifinals. India lost to England by a margin of 10 wickets. Many experts have slammed India for not playing the fearless brand of cricket that they had earlier planned to and had shown in some bilateral series ahead of the big ticket event in Australia.
Head coach of Team India on this tour of NZ, VVS Laxman, has expressed the same desire. His message to Hardik and Co is that they should go out there and express themselves and play fearlessly. It will be interesting to see whether these words translate into action and we see Team India playing fearlessly in the middle.