Will India beat Kiwis today?

Chris Dhambarage reporting from Dambulla

New Zealand will be hoping to produce a repeat performance when they take on India in their Tri Nation limited overs cricket tournament last preliminary round match at the Rangiri Dambulla International Stadium under lights today.

The winners of this game will qualify to play against the hosts Sri Lanka in the final which is scheduled for Saturday at the same venue.

Even then New Zealand will be quite confident after having defeated the Indians by a massive margin of 200 runs in the opening match of the tournament last week. On that occasion India chasing a formidable total of 288 runs were shot out for just 88 runs in 29.3 overs.

Those bad memories no doubt will be still in the minds of the Indian batsmen as they face a must win situation to maintain their impressive record in Sri Lanka where they have won four out of four titles.

India’s latest triumph in Sri Lanka came last month when they lifted the Asia Cup tournament while overcoming Sri Lanka in the final.

But this time they are in a tough situation with some of their top players struggling to regain their form. The Indian team is also at the bottom of the points table and they need to put up an improved performance to topple the inform New Zealand side who will move into the final in case the match is abandoned due to bad weather.

The Kiwis are placed second in the points table at the moment and with the addition of two points they will qualify to play in the final with Sri Lanka. In fact the last time New Zealand played in Dambulla in 2003 they had a very successful series where they clinched the Bank Al Falah Trophy tournament that also featured Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

India will need to lift their overall game and get their act together well quickly as the New Zealanders seem to have acclimatized to the conditions more than any other side in this competition. They have the ideal players to exploit the conditions whether they are batting first or under lights.

This is one area which the Indians need to address because their batting has not yet clicked well in this tournament.

The only consolation for India is the batting of opener Virender Sehwag whose unbeaten 99 helped them to register their solitary win of the tournament against Sri Lanka.

However in their previous outing India were skittled out for a dismal 103 runs from 33.4 overs by a much improved Sri Lankan seam attack with Thisara Perera claiming his maiden five wicket haul.

New Zealand will be depending on their captain Ross Taylor and Scott Styris for another good performance after the pair added a record 190 runs for the fourth wicket in their opening match of the tournament against India.

The teams:

India (from): Mahendra Singh Dhoni (captain), Virender Sehwag, Dinesh Karthik, Virat Kohil, Yuvraj Singh, Praveen Kumar, Abhimanyu Mithun, Ashish Nehra, Pragyan Ojah, Munaf Patel, Suresh Raina, Ishant Sharma, Rohit Sharma, Saurabh Tiwary, Ravichandran Ashwin.

New Zealand (from): Ross Taylor (captain), Grant Elliott, Martin Guptill, Garath Hopkins, Peter Ingram, Nathan McCullum, Andy McKay, Kyle Mills, Jacob Oram, Jeethan Patel, Tim Southee, Scott Styris, Darryl Tuffey, B.J. Watling, Kane Wilkinson.