New Zealand head coach Rob Walter is disappointed that his side couldn't finish off the first two T20Is against India despite being in strong positions each time.
"In T20 cricket, it's the finest of margins as we know. Both games, we could easily have been on the winning side of it, but weren't," Walter said on landing in Wellington on Sunday ahead of the third T20I. "Probably missed out on a couple of opportunities each time where you probably would have sealed the game off for us. It's a bit of a disappointment, but also very happy with how we've played.
"We haven't played much competitive cricket coming into the series as a team [New Zealand last played in July, an ODI series in the West Indies]. And actually, I felt we've played pretty well in probably 80% of each game. We just haven't been able to put the finishing touches on it each time, which is disappointing. But still so much good stuff to come out of both games so far."
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In the first T20I, New Zealand dropped Axar Patel and Shreyas Iyer at crucial stages of the game. Axar was put down on 13 and went on to score 24, while Iyer was dropped on 27 and made 42. India ended up chasing down 226 with four wickets and two balls to spare.
In the second T20I, New Zealand reprieved four India batters. Jacob Duffy dismissed Abhishek Sharma off a no-ball in the second over, Mitchell Santner dropped Sanju Samson on the boundary, Bevon Jacobs put Vaibhav Sooryavanshi down, and Jacobs then dropped Naman Dhir in the 13th over.
New Zealand couldn't defend 180 in the second match after they failed to defend 225 in the first. Walter said the "pitch had changed a little bit" between the games and the quality of bowling had also gone up.
"Conditions are always different even if the day is the same. The surface was a little bit different," Walter said. "The starts to the game are different. Nothing ever flows the exact same way. Certainly a little bit trickier from a batting point of view and that reflected in the scores. Probably also the bowling units on both ends bowled a bit better than the night before, having learnt a few lessons from that."
'Fast bowlers rested to manage workloads'
New Zealand will be rotating their fast bowlers for the remaining three T20Is against India, and Walter said that was down to managing workloads ahead of the five-ODI and two-Test series that will follow since "playing back-to-back T20 games is not the way" to build for the longer formats of the game.
While Matt Henry will sit out all three remaining T20Is, Kyle Jamieson and Matt Fisher (as cover) will be available only for the third T20I. Lockie Ferguson has been pulled out of the third T20I, but Ferguson and Josh Clarkson will be around for the fourth and fifth T20Is.
The quicks available for all three remaining games are Adam Milne, Blair Tickner, Jacob Duffy and Nathan Smith.
"Blair Tickner will be joining, [and] Matt Fisher will be joining as we try to move our way through the process; it's not a perfect science," Walter said. "But we're doing our very best to give everyone a chance to get ready but also put their best foot forward when they do run onto the park. Hopefully it's going to work out for us."