Team India Departs for New Zealand Tour: Team India to Play Five ODIs and Two Test Matches

India Vs New Zealand 2014

Team India Departs for New Zealand Tour: Team India to Play Five ODIs and Two Test Matches

Team India left for New Zealand tour in the captaincy of Dhoni for playing one day series and test series. Team India will play five one day matches and two test matches. Except Chateswar Pujara, Zaheer Khan, Murali Vijay and Umesh Yadav, all other team members left for New Zealand. The first one day match will be played on January 19 in Napier with which the tour will begin.

New Delhi: Team India will play five one day matches and the second one match will be played at Hamilton on 22nd, third one day match is at Auckland on 25th, fourth one day is at Hamilton on 28th and the final one day match will be played at Wellington on 31st January. First test match will be played from February 6 to 10 in Auckland and the second test match will be played from 14 to 18, February in Wellington.

India played eight test series in New Zealand and won only two since 1967. The first test series that they won was in the year 2008-2009 under the captaincy of Dhoni. Shikhar Dhawan, Rohit Shama failed to perform well in South Africa. The Indian players are not rising to the occasion and this is important for them to win the tests. The tour is important in the perspective of 2015 world cup. The world cup is going to be hosted by Australia and New Zealand jointly in a year’s time and the performance of the players will be observed keenly by the selectors.

India is presently the number two team in test format. The recent South Africa tour after the retirement of Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly and VVS Laxman was just satisfactory. They lost the one day match series and also the test series. New Zealand tour thus will be a testing time for India for proving that they deserve to be in top rank in tests.

Indian team for one day matches: Dhoni, Dhawan, Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Rahane, Ambati Rayudu, Suresh Raina, Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Bhuvaneswar Kumar, Shami, Ishant Sharma, Amit Mishra, Ishaver Pandey, Binny and Varun Aurora

Indian team for test matches: Dhoni, Dhawan, Murali Vijay, Pujara, Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Rahane, Jadeja, Zaheer Khan, Shami, Ishant Sharma, Ambati Rayudu, Bhuvaneswar Kumar, Ashwin, Umesh Yadav, Sahu and Pandey