Tour of New Zealand 1993-94            Captain: Mohammad Azharuddin

India's 34th Test tour

Fifth Test-playing tour of  New Zealand by India

(November - February 1994)

The New Zealand Cricket Council asked India to tour as the Pakistan Cricket Board would not agree to playing three more ODIs in March. The Indian Board would not agree to an itinerary solely of limited-overs fixtures so a Test match was arranged. However, timing of the tour was criticised for taking leading players out of India just as the domestic season reached its climax.

Played in poor weather and with New Zealand lacking her star players, Crowe, Cairns and Doull, the Test match was a dull affair, brightened only by a century opening stand between Sidhu and Mongia that kept India briefly interested in chansing a target of 310. In the one-days Sachin Tendulkar opened the innings and scored a superb century. The New Zealand captain opined that the teams would be evenly match but that Tendulkar was the difference between them.

Other Indian tours

Previous tour

Sri Lanka 1993-94

Next tour

England 1996

Next New Zealand tour

1998-99

Members of the Test tour  party  (15)

Opening batsmen: Navjot Singh Sidhu, Manoj Prabhakar, Ajay Jadeja

Middle-order batsmen:Mohammad Azharuddin, Sachin Tendulkar, Vinod Kambli, Pravin Amre

Wicket-keepers: Nayan Mongia

Spinners:Anil Kumble, Venkatapathy Raju, Raju Chauhan

Fast bowlers: Kapil Dev, Javagal Srinath, [Manoj Prabhakar], Salil Ankola, Venkatesh Prasad (r)

Representation of teams:  

Ba - Baroda (1)

B - Bombay (4)

D - Delhi (1)

Hd - Hyderabad (2)

Hy - Haryana (2)

K - Karnataka (2)

MP - Madhya Pradesh (1)

Pj - Punjab (1)

Rj - Rajasthan (1)

Average age of  team at time of first Test match

(19 March 1994) :

26 yrs  6 months

Test Appearances made before the tour

Kapil Dev 130,  Azharuddin 61,  Prabhakar 33,  Tendulkar 31,  Sidhu 30,  Manjrekar 29,  Raju 17,  Kumble 16,  Amre 11,  Srinath 11,  Chauhan 10,  Kambli 10,  Jadeja 3,  Mongia 3,  Ankola 1  (Prasad 0).

Team Officials

Selectors

G R Viswanath (chairman),  Kishen M Rungta,  Sambaran Bannerjee,  Ravinder Chadha,  A D Gaekwad

The selectors met in New Delhi on Monday afternoon 21 February.

Time between selection and departure from India

  13 days

 (21 February - 6 March)

Selection

The squad was limited to fifteen so Manjrekar was required to serve as reserve wicket-keeper. The selectors retained the same squad used in the Test series against the Sri Lankans.

Tour Party Announced : 21 February 1994

Not selected:  The selectors gave consideration to batsman Bhupinder Singh jnr (Punjab), B S V Prasad (Karnataka) and medium-pacer Prashant S Vaidya (Bengal). Amre was a member of tour party - he did not play in a match

Travel

As part of their preparations for New Zealand, the Indians took part in a conditioning camp from 25 February.  They practised on greenish pitches at the Wankhede Stadium where seamers from Ranji teams had been invited to bowl at them. Practice was held between 26 February and 4 March, after which the team assembled in Bombay while some team members played a charity match in Delhi against a World XI.

They left Sahar International Airport, Bombay, for Auckland in the early hours of 6 March. They had returned late from the match in Delhi and boarded their flight after a brief stopover in the transit lounge.  Their plane finally landed in Christchurch on the morning of 7 March. The tour group travelled on to Dunedin on Wednesday morning 9 March for the first match.

Time spent in New Zealand

   27 days

(7 March - 3 April)

On-tour selection committee

Azharuddin (captain),  Tendulkar (vice-captain),  Wadekar (coach)

Reinforcements

Prasad was requested to arrive in time for the ODI series, when Manoj Prabhakar returned home early on 20 March with a a stress fracture in his left heel. Prabhakar asked to stay on tour as a batsman only but the physiotherapist would not allow it.

Prasad left Bangalore on 18 March for New Delhi and flew to New Zealand from there. Prasad was the third graduate of the MRF Pace Foundation (after Vivek Razdan and Subroto Banerjee) to play for the national team

Praveen Amre, suffering from asthma, did not appear in the first match, but then reported fit. However, he did not play in any match on tour and was subsequently dropped from the next tour to Sharjah because of not having played.

Fixtures/Results

† not first-class

§  one-day internationals (Bank of New Zealand Trophy)

Time spent in New Zealand before First Test:    12 days

(7 March - 19 March)

Test appearances on tour

1 -    Azharuddin,  Chauhan,  Kambli,  Kapil Dev,  Kumble,  Manjrekar,  Mongia,  Raju,  Sidhu,  Srinath,  Tendulkar.

0 -    Ankola,  Jadeja,  Prabhakar.

Highlights

•    Prabhakar scored a century (147) opening the batting in the first tour match before he was injured.

•    Navjot Sidhu just failed to score a century (98) in the Test match at Hamilton.

•    Sachin Tendulkar, having passed 2000 Test runs while still aged only 20, in his innings of 43 in the Test match, then scored 15, 82, 63 and 40 in the four one-day internationals.

•    Kumble took 5-33 in the Wellington ODI; but Srinath was the highest wicket-taker (15) on the whole tour.

Tour Summary

Return to India

Prabhakar returned home early with a stress fracture of the left heel, flying out on 19 March. 

The Indians flew home from Auckland to Singapore on 4 April and arrived in Bombay on 5 April.

Time away from India

 30 days   (6 March to 5 April)

Finances