The New Zealand cricket team, led by Tom Latham, has departed for India without their former skipper Kane Williamson to face Rohit Sharma and his men. The three-match Test series between India and New Zealand is scheduled to start on October 16 at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru.
This is Latham's first assignment as the full-time Test captain of New Zealand even though he has stepped in for Kane Williamson before. His challenge will be to change New Zealand's poor record in India in the longest format of the game. The Kiwis have won only two out of 36 Test matches in the country with the last win coming way back in 1988.
"From my point of view, it's about trying to continue doing the good stuff we've been doing, trying to put my spin on things. It's an exciting challenging going over to India and once we can go over there hopefully [we can] play with a bit of freedom, bit of no fear and try and take it to them. If we do that hopefully gives ourselves a good chance.
"Think in India we've seen teams that have done well out there in the past have been quite aggressive towards them, especially with the bat they've looked to play a few shots, but also put them under pressure which is really important over there rather than sitting and waiting for something to happen. We'll decide on how we want to play when we get over there, but guys have got plans around how they like to approach things and hopefully, we can fine tune those," Latham said before departing for India.
New Zealand lost to Sri Lanka 2-0 recently despite performing well, especially in the first Test. Latham insisted on learning a few things from touring the Asian country and is looking forward to the challenge of playing in India. "We actually did some really good things in Sri Lanka. We fell on the wrong sides of the results but there were some good things.
"The approach we had with the bat, apart from that one innings I thought we played really well. So it's about continuing that as much as we can and trying to play a brand that we are proud of playing and if we do that hopefully it gives us a good chance," the Kiwi skipper added.
