At the start of the World Cup, no cricket expert in World will pick New Zealand as semi-finalists, but after the World Cup as we have seen recently being the finalists in World Cup 2015 and almost winning in 2019, New zealand are always the underdogs who packs big punch in crunch matches.
Let see how India and New zealand fayered when they came head to head in the World Cup matches –
1) 1987 Reliance World Cup – In the 8th match played in Bengaluru, in Reliance World Cup 1987, India won by 16 runs.
Batting first India made a respectable score of 252 runs and Kapil Dev played an agressive innings of 72 runs from 58 balls.
In reply, black caps were never out of the contention but they fell short by 16 runs as only managed 236 runs in 50 overs.
2) Benson & Hedges World Cup 1992 – Didn’t took very long for blackcaps to give the return punch as they won the match by 4 wickets.
India batted first and made only 230 runs and Newzealand knew they have real chance to win it as India fell short by 10 or 20 runs.
In reply, black caps had absolutely no problems as they won the match with 17 balls remaining and 4 wickets in hand.
Manoj Prabhakar bowled economically with 3 wickets in his 10 overs.
3) 1999 ICC World Cup – New zealand continued their good show against India as they won by 5 wickets in the 8th match of the ICC World Cup 1999.
India batted first and made 251 runs in 50 overs which was a competitive total to chase for blackcaps.
But blackcaps had good show with bat and they wrapped up the match in 48.2 overs.
4) ICC World Cup 2003 – India finally had a big win against Black caps as they won the 7th Super match at Centurian by 7 wickets.
New zealand just made 146 runs and Indian batsman though had a longer time at the crease then they should have, but at last chased down the score in 40.4 overs.
5) ICC World Cup 2019 – Not so happy memories for Indian fans as they saw the run out of Dhoni with India still requiring 23 of 9 balls.
With one match between India and Newzealand already got abandoned in the group stage, both teams had no idea, how each team is gonna play against each other.
Newzealand made 239 runs in 2 days as the reserve day for semifinal has to be used when rain arrived on first day.
All the top Indian batters in reply saw themselves occupying the crease for fraction of second as they were unable to handle the swing bowling of Matt Henry and Trent Boult.
India finally succumbed to 221 runs and with that was the end of the hope for Indian fansto win the World Cup under captain Kohli.
