Auckland: India will look to stretch their lead to 4-0 and take another step towards a series whitewash when they face New Zealand in the fourth T20I at Eden Park on Friday, with the hosts battling a mounting injury crisis in their pace attack.
India have already sealed the five-match series with a game to spare after a batting masterclass in Wellington, where Abhishek Sharma’s 35-ball hundred — his fourth ton in T20Is — powered a six-wicket win chasing 199. It was India’s third straight T20I series win in New Zealand, who last beat India at home in Hamilton in 2019. Since the start of 2025, Abhishek has scored 1,984 T20I runs at a strike rate of 200.6, and he returns to Auckland as the newly re-crowned No. 1 T20I batter in the ICC rankings.
New Zealand, in contrast, are running out of bowlers. Matt Henry was already out of the final three matches, and now Lockie Ferguson has been ruled out of the remainder of the series with a calf injury sustained during the second T20I, with New Zealand Cricket confirming he needs another week to recover. Matt Fisher has been retained in the squad as cover. Captain Mitchell Santner has bowled well but received little support, and that is something the Black Caps will desperately want to change at Eden Park — an unforgiving venue for bowlers, with short straight boundaries and an average first-innings T20I score of 156, though this series has regularly gone well past 200.
The numbers underline India’s dominance in the rivalry. India have won 22 of their 34 T20Is against New Zealand, with 11 defeats and one tie, and have won five games in a row against the Black Caps and nine of their last 10 T20Is in the country, two of them via super overs. All three games so far have been high-scoring affairs, and the fourth could well be decided by the bowlers — India, despite great starts with the ball in every match, have allowed New Zealand to post big totals late in the innings.
With the series fate sealed, India have room to test their bench strength. If Shreyas Iyer’s side sit out a senior player or two, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi could get another chance at the top alongside the in-form Abhishek, while the spin options of Axar Patel and Kuldeep Yadav — both with strong records against Glenn Phillips, New Zealand’s form batter with 169 runs in the series — will be in the selection conversation. Santner, meanwhile, has dismissed Sanju Samson four times in seven innings and remains New Zealand’s only control bowler, with an economy of 7.00 in the series.
Probable XIs — New Zealand: Finn Allen, Tim Seifert (wk), Daryl Mitchell, Glenn Phillips, Bevon Jacobs, Michael Bracewell, Mitchell Santner (c), Nathan Smith, Kyle Jamieson, Adam Milne, Blair Tickner. India: Abhishek Sharma, Sanju Samson (wk), Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, Shreyas Iyer (c), Tilak Varma, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Naman Dhir, Axar Patel, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Arshdeep Singh, Prince Yadav.
Match details: New Zealand vs India, 4th T20I, Eden Park, Auckland, Friday, October 30. Toss at 12:00 PM IST, match starts 12:30 PM IST. Live telecast on the Sony Sports Network, live streaming on the SonyLIV app and website.
