No Vaibhav Sooryavanshi But 2 Changes Made To Indian Team For 1st T20I vs New Zealand

Vaibhav Sooryavanshi was benched for 1st T20I vs West Indies© X (Twitter)

India captain Shreyas Iyer had already confirmed the decision to leave Vaibhav Sooryavanshi on the bench, but two changes were made to the playing XI for the first T20I against New Zealand in Christchurch. It was Shreyas who won the toss and elected to field against New Zealand in the first match of their five-T20I series on Thursday. Among the changes India made, the Gautam Gambhir-led team management decided to bring in all-rounder Nitish Kumar Reddy and Mayank Yadav in place of Shivam Dube and Prince Yadav.

"Obviously a quick turnaround, want to have a fair idea about how the wicket will play, how much bounce it's going to offer, and based on that we took this decision," Shreyas said after winning the toss. When asked about the travel, he added: "I think pretty well. A lot of them took a while to get accustomed to the conditions and also the weather, the time difference especially. But no complaints. We are a bunch of professionals, and everybody knows that in the dressing room."

India drew 2-2 against West Indies in the 5-match series before the final T20I was washed out. On the last assignment, he said: "Well, a lot of positives, honestly, especially in our batting. I think scoring 230, 250 in almost every alternate game was a plus for us. And also bowling-wise, it wasn't easy to bowl on smaller grounds and flat wickets, but the boys showed a lot of character, and that is the same attitude and approach we want to come here with."

Confirming the changes in the team, Shreyas added: "We've got two changes. So Reddy comes in for Dube and Mayank comes in for Prince."

India: Sanju Samson (wk), Abhishek Sharma, Ishan Kishan, Shreyas Iyer (c), Tilak Varma, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Naman Dhir, Axar Patel, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Arshdeep Singh and Mayank Yadav.

New Zealand: Finn Allen, Tim Seifert (wk), Daryl Mitchell, Glenn Phillips, Bevon Jacobs, Michael Bracewell, Mitchell Santner (c), Nathan Smith, Matt Henry, Adam Milne and Lockie Ferguson.

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