India start off their New Zealand tour with a dominating victory in the first of the five match ODI series. In slightly similar conditions to Australia, Indian bowlers were absolutely top class leading India to a massive 8-wicket win against the Kiwis.

Apart from the match getting slightly delayed due to a ‘sun-stroke’, this match turned out to be an ordinary and unpredictable one, given the recent impressive performance that the Kiwis have had.

Winning the toss, the Kiwis decided to put runs on the board. India couldn’t have asked anything better with the ball, as the dynamic duo of Kuldeep Yadav and Yuzvendra Chahal troubled the New Zealand batsmen throughout the innings. On a surface that hardly provided anything for spinners, the Indian spin-twins took six wickets in total and dismissed the Kiwis for 157.

This brilliant bowling display started off with Mohammad Shami picking up two early wickets, also bringing up his personal milestone of 100 ODI wickets under his belt. Mohammad Shami’s 3-19 in just six overs was enough to declare him the Man of the Match as well. The seamers had a peaceful day today due to completion of New Zealand’s innings taking place in the 38th over itself.

India were hardly bothered about the chase, batting on a flat pitch along with small boundaries. Although, the Indian batsmen did spend some time on the crease and made it a steady chase which is really important given the World Cup is around the corner. At the same time, this also can be called an unfortunate situation as there was no dependancy on India’s middle and lower middle order in this chase and the top-3 were to the rescue as always. The more the involvement of batsmen next to top 3, more will be the trust and depth of batting lineup assessed.

Shikhar Dhawan (75*) and Virat Kohli (45) led India to victory in the first ODI chasing a comfortable total. The Kiwis are known to bounce back in games especially at home which hopefully will turn out to be an even contest next time.