Lucknow, Jan 29 () New Zealand captain Mitchell Santner won the toss and opted to bat first against India in the second T20I of the three-match series at Bharat Ratna Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee Ekana Cricket Stadium, here on Sunday.
New Zealand, who are leading the series 1-0, didn’t make any changes to their side.
“We are gonna have a bat. The stats say that it’s challenging to chase here. We’ll try to get some runs on the board and see what it does. We had a tough one-day series, it was nice to bounce back with a win. Different guys stepping up at different times is always nice,” said Santner at the toss.
“It’s never easy to beat India at home. That partnership between Surya and Hardik put them right back in the game. The key is to take wickets through the middle, that’s the best way to slow them down. You got to take that (bigger ground dimensions) into account. Same team,” he added.
On the other hand, the Hardik Pandya-led India made one change to the side as Yuzvendra Chahal came in place of Umran Malik.
“We were also thinking to bat first but bowling is also fine. This is a new team, but we have spoken about getting into the challenge and having to do difficult things. It can’t be more difficult than this in a bilateral series, losing the first game and then two games on the line,” said Hardik.
“Looking forward to this game. We are going to make mistakes and we’ll learn from them. It might turn. Umran misses out, Yuzi comes in,” he added.
Playing XIs:
New Zealand: Finn Allen, Devon Conway (wk), Mark Chapman, Glenn Phillips, Daryl Mitchell, Michael Bracewell, Mitchell Santner(c), Ish Sodhi, Jacob Duffy, Lockie Ferguson, Blair Tickner
India: Shubman Gill, Ishan Kishan(wk), Rahul Tripathi, Suryakumar Yadav, Hardik Pandya(c), Deepak Hooda, Washington Sundar, Shivam Mavi, Kuldeep Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Arshdeep Singh
ak/bsk