New Zealand needs to beware of Zaheer Khan, Ishant Sharma and company

The last time India toured New Zealand in 2003, the hosts made life hell for the visitors by preparing hostile, pace-friendly wickets at almost every venue to exploit their advantage.

New Zealand needs to beware of Zaheer Khan, Ishant Sharma and company

The last time India toured New Zealand in 2003, the hosts made life hell for the visitors by preparing hostile, pace-friendly wickets at almost every venue to exploit their advantage. The result: India suffered one of its most humiliating defeats. They lost both the Test matches and were routed 5-2 in the one-day series. The home team dare not adopt the same strategy this time.

In Ishant Sharma and Zaheer Khan, India have the ammo to take the attack to any opposition and the New Zealanders will be aware of that. "The last time we toured there, they gave us grassy and pacy wickets. New Zealand have a good pace attack, but they will think twice before preparing such wickets this time given our attack," said former India pacer Manoj Prabhakar, a New Zealand tourist in 1989-90, 1991-92 and 1994-95.

"Ishant and Zaheer will enjoy bowling over there. The key is that these two have a strong back-up support.

During our time, we were only two Kapil Dev and myself. If Ishant and Zaheer do well, it will provide confidence to the third seamer," observed Prabhakar, who opened the bowling and batting for India on their 1989-90 tour of New Zealand.

Prabhakar observed that the key to success on the tour is to start well. "If New Zealand get on top of you early, then you will find it difficult to stop them," he said.

Challenge
Hence, the challenge is how quickly the players adapt to the conditions given that there are no tour games to acclimatise.

India's bowling coach Venkatesh Prasad expressed complete confidence in his men's ability to settle down quickly to any conditions. "It is going to be a real challenge as the conditions are going to be different at different venues. But, we have the confidence in our bowlers. I have seen since the time I have taken over, in the last two-three years, our bowlers have adapted superbly to different conditions whether it was Bangladesh immediately after the (2007) World Cup, then in Ireland when the conditions were really cold, in England after that, then in the ICC World Twenty20 in South Africa, at Perth in Australia and in the CB one-day series," said Prasad, who toured New Zealand in 1993-94, 1994-95 and 1998-99.

Momentum
"So, I am pretty sure given the confidence they (bowlers) have at this point of time and the momentum they are in, they will adapt pretty well in New Zealand. Then, Harbhajan Singh and Zaheer have toured there before and I have been there thrice, so there is going to be a lot of inputs about playing at different venues," said Prasad.

Talking from his own experience of dealing with the New Zealand conditions, the former India pacer said: "In a few places it was helpful, some places it was really tough, especially in Wellington, which is the windiest place in the world. So we need to come up with a strategy of who is going to bowl with and against the wind. In Christchurch and Auckland it was seaming, the weather was nice, so you enjoyed bowling."

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