India vs New Zealand: Both teams gearing up for their first win
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India and New Zealand will face each other in a Super-12 game, the 28th match of the T20 World Cup 2021.
The two teams share an interesting story with each other in ICC events. Across all formats since 1990, the two teams clashed 8 times in ICC events, among which New Zealand won 7 and India won just 1.
India and New Zealand played each other in the group stage of T20 World Cup editions of 2007 and 2016. New Zealand won both the matches by 10 runs and 47 runs respectively.
Having lost the first matches, both teams will be striving for their first victory in the tournament. The New Zealand team is playing a T20 World Cup without Ross Taylor for the first time and their middle order has looked a bit shaky.
They will try to make good use of the powerplay and might just promote Devon Conway to the opening spot to pair with Martin Guptill. Jimmy Neesham, Glenn Phillips and Tim Seifert might also bat with a more positive intent than that against Pakistan.
The Indian bowlers will be looking forward to keeping it straight and making good use of the spin of Varun Chakravarthy and Ravindra Jadeja in the middle overs. They might also keep Shardul Thakur in the squad, considering the brilliant form of the right-arm fast-medium bowler in IPL earlier.
New Zealand will also try to make good use of their spin attack. Mitchell Santner and Ish Sodhi, their in-form spinners, were two of the architects of New Zealand's victory against India in World T20 2016, as they picked up 4 wickets and 3 wickets respectively.
In World T20 2007, it was Daniel Vettori who was the player of the match against India as he picked up 4 wickets.
India might go with the same batting strategy as the previous match and the Kiwi seamers like Southee and Boult will be striving for a couple of early wickets.
India will certainly not want to further aggravate their poor record against New Zealand in ICC events while it's a mission for the Kiwis to stay afloat on the point table.