Toss: New Zealand chose to bowl v India
In the first game to be played since Seddon Park put up floodlights, Kane Williamson won the toss and chose to bowl.
He was mindful that New Zealand had failed to put up a good enough total in the second T20I, which has forced this game to be a must-win for them in order to keep the five-match series alive. And to address that, they have brought in Scott Kuggeleijn for Blair Tickner. “They both offer similar things, bowling a heavy ball, but obviously with Kuggeleijn, we get a bit of batting as well,” Williamson said at the toss.
India, meanwhile, go unchanged again, which meant Shardul Thakur, who has gone for 65 runs in five overs this series, has another chance with Navdeep Saini still on the bench.
India have not won a T20I series in New Zealand yet and Virat Kohli has a great chance to set that record straight. “We don’t want to take our foot off the pedal. Even if New Zealand play good cricket, we want to push them,” he said.
New Zealand: 1 Martin Guptill, 2 Colin Munro, 3 Kane Williamson (capt),4 Colin de Grandhomme, 5 Ross Taylor, 6 Tim Seifert (wk), 7 Mitchell Santner, 8 Scott Kuggeleijn, 9 Ish Sodhi, 10 Tim Southee, 11 Hamish Bennett
India: 1 Rohit Sharma, 2 KL Rahul (wk), 3 Virat Kohli (capt), 4 Shreyas Iyer, 5 Manish Pandey, 6 Shivam Dube, 7 Ravindra Jadeja, 8 Shardul Thakur, 9 Yuzvendra Chahal, 10 Mohammed Shami, 11 Jasprit Bumrah