In the first ODI in Napier, the Indian batsmen played to a plan and the bowlers took early wickets as they thoroughly outplayed the hosts. New Zealand’s carefully executed plans, which derailed India during the Twenty20s, came unstuck.

Sidharth Monga in Wellington05-Mar-2009
Daniel Vettori: “We’ve got to realise that to compete against India you have to be near-best.” © Getty Images
In the first ODI in Napier, the Indian batsmen played to a plan and the bowlers took early wickets as they thoroughly outplayed the hosts. New Zealand’s carefully executed plans, which derailed India during the Twenty20s, came unstuck.Daniel Vettori, New Zealand’s captain, was not a happy man after the loss because his plans weren’t executed properly. But on the eve of the second match, he sounded confident about getting it right this time.Before the start of the series, New Zealand last played India in an ODI back in September 2005. Those were the days of Venugopal Rao, Mohammad Kaif, JP Yadav, Ajit Agarkar and Ashish Nehra. Four years later, what New Zealand face is a dynamic and highly unpredictable side. Acknowledging this, Vettori said: “We’ve got to realise that to compete against India you have to be near-best.”Facing the prospect of going two-down in a five-match series, New Zealand couldn’t have come to a better venue than the Westpac Stadium. They haven’t lost an international here since December 2005.Against England in June last year, they put behind the disappointment of the Twenty20s and started the series on a winning note. in December-January, they levelled the series against West Indies after a defeat first-up. They started a successful campaign in Australia last month by bowling them out for 148.”I suppose we do have a little bit of reputation coming into Wellington for these sorts of games and playing reasonably well,” Vettori said. “So we are confident that we can bounce back pretty quickly. It’s a ground we enjoy playing at, and hopefully all those things move towards a win for us.”I love coming to Wellington and playing cricket. Even Test matches. The Basin [Reserve] is synonymous with Test cricket in this country and now I think for the one-dayers, you get one of your better crowds in Wellington. The crowd turns up excited about the game, and it feels like a real one-day game of cricket. That’s what the guys look forward to. And it is a proper cricket ground as well, with big boundaries, which lot of us bowlers get excited by. Just feels like a cricket ground.”The tour has followed a trend till now. In all three games, India have batted first. In all three matches, they have made quick starts. The rest of the game has been decided by how well the New Zealand fast bowlers have come back. In the Twenty20s, they managed to get quick wickets, followed by smart stifling jobs by Daniel Vettori. And though they failed in the first ODI, Vettori is not looking at a change of personnel or plans.”We are tying to find the balance between being tough on them [the bowlers] and also realising that they have done a pretty good job for a while now,” Vettori said. “I think they understand where they went wrong and how to rectify that. We are hoping that Napier is a bit of an aberration in terms of our bowling performance, but we need some guys to step up and replicate the form they have shown previous to that game.”If you look at the guys who played in the last game, Ian Butler bowled really well, Kyle Mills has been our best bowler for a long time and Iain O’Brien has been pretty impressive in his start to international cricket. We will have a hard look at Tim [Southee] coming back into the side, but I would probably err on the side of backing these guys to get the job done this time around.”The familiar battle lines have been drawn: India’s flair and unpredictability against New Zealand’s method and combativeness. It will be interesting to see what Vettori’s men come up with under pressure.