Toss New Zealand chose to field vs India
Stop press. New Zealand have won a toss. More significantly, Shreyas Iyer has lost one. And he did so by changing his call. He has been calling tails all the while only to lose when he changed to heads. This is only the seventh toss Iyer has lost in 26 international matches as captain.
Iyer still came up smelling of roses because New Zealand offered India what they wanted anyway: first strike. Iyer said they want to do that to put themselves under some pressure of defending a total in the night in possible dew.
India made two changes, bringing in Varun Chakravarthy for the first time this series. This is his first match for India after his injury during the Afghanistan series earlier this year. He took the place of Axar Patel, meaning India have Bhuvneshwar Kumar, who replaced Mayank Yadav, batting at No. 8.
New Zealand made just one like-for-like change, bringing in Blair Tickner for Matt Fisher.
India had already won the series in the first three matches, but lost the first of the two dead rubbers in Auckland. Hamilton presents a more conventionally shaped ground, but small boundaries nonetheless.
New Zealand: 1 Finn Allen, 2 Tim Seifert (wk), 3 Daryl Mitchell, 4 Glenn Phillips, 5 Bevon Jacobs, 6 Michael Bracewell, 7 Mitchell Santner (capt), 8 Nathan Smith, 9 Adam Milne, 10 Jacob Duffy, 11 Blair Tickner
India 1 Abhishek Sharma, 2 Sanju Samson, 3 Ishan Kishan (wk), 4 Shreyas Iyer (capt), 5 Tilak Varma, 6 Nitish Kumar Reddy, 7 Naman Dhir, 8 Bhuvneshwar Kumar, 9 Arshdeep Singh, 10 Prince Yadav, 11 Varun Chakravarthy
