Auckland: India took full advantage of an influential toss to reduce New Zealand to 54-3 at lunch Thursday on the first day of the first cricket test.
Captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni won his sixth-straight toss in New Zealand - he won all five in the one-day international series - and called correctly for the 10th in his last 11 matches to give the Indian bowlers first use of a remarkably green pitch at Eden Park.
Dhoni's New Zealand opposite, Brendon McCullum, had called the toss "important" - an exercise in Kiwi understatement as the drop-in pitch prepared for the match had a thick grass covering which promised considerable assistance to fast bowlers.
McCullum had cause to reflect ruefully on the toss when he found himself, at No. 5, batting before lunch.
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