The first of the three Twenty20 Internationals against New Zealand on Wednesday (November 1) will be Ashish Nehra's last appearance for India, on his home ground, which lends more context to this series than there actually is.
Nehra had requested for the reservation of a whole box to have his friends and family at the venue for his last game for India. While all that is great, he is not a certain starter in the XI, although it could be assumed that he would be given that he was only named only for the first game in the 15-man squad for the series.
The visitors were up and about early on the eve of the opening T20I, engaging in a three-hour full-fledged training session. They first worked on their fielding drills, did some catching in the outfield followed by a hit-out in the nets, but not before Trent Boult and Tim Southee tried their hands at Tom Latham's keeping drill.
India, on the other hand, had an optional training session, with the big guns like Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan, etc. opting to rest it out. The likes of Manish Pandey, Hardik Pandya and Shreyas Iyer chose to spend some time at the ground while coach Ravi Shasrti oversaw the session.