India vs New Zealand Live Score 3rd Test, Day 1: Akash Deep gets early breakthrough for IND after NZ win toss, bat first

India vs New Zealand Live Score 3rd Test, Day 1: All right Rohit Sharma and Tom Latham have walked out. Rohit is sweating already in that blazer, that is how humid it is in Mumbai. We can hear the sound of the horns of local trains running between Marine Lines and Churchgate. Ravi Shastri is ready to make thr stadium shake with his voice. Here we go!

India vs New Zealand Live Score 3rd Test, Day 1: Or that is what it seems judging by what happened at practice yesterday where Bumrah was the only Indian player who wasn't present.

India vs New Zealand Live Score 3rd Test, Day 1: Karthik and Kartik on the pitch report today. Dinesh Karthik says that there will be a bit of turn at the start, will get better to bat on as the day progresses. However, it will get more difficult to bat in the subsequent days. “If the team winning the toss doesn't bat first, I'd be very surprised,” he says.

Murali Kartik says that there is superficial grass on it which might help the fast bowlers as well. It will also make the spin quicker. Win the toss and bat first is the way to go.

India vs New Zealand Live Score 3rd Test, Day 1: We can see Gautam Gambhir checking out the pitch. Mumbai boys Sarfaraz and Jaiswal are doing their sprints with each other, as was senior Mumbai boy Rohit Sharma albeit some distance away from them. Rohit has now walked back in, presumably to get into his Test whites and blazer.

India vs New Zealand Live Score 3rd Test, Day 1: Ravichandran Ashwin has taken 38 wickets at the Wankhede Stadium in Test cricket. He is tied with Anil Kumble at the top of the list of bowlers with most Test wickets here although Ashwin has played four innings lesser than the former India captain. Axar Patel, meanwhile, has a whopping 14 wickets in the one Test he played here in 2021 which was also against New Zealand. Ravindra Jadeja has also played just that one game at the Wankhede and he took six wickets.

India vs New Zealand Live Score 3rd Test, Day 1: Rohit's first, and thus far last, appearance at the Wankhede was the second match of his 63-Test career. That match, held from November 14 to 16, 2013, is better remembered as the one where Sachin Tendulkar bid goodbye to international cricket. Hence, the fact that Rohit scored a masterful 111 not out off 127 balls, or that Cheteshwar Pujara made 113 in 167 balls, was forgotten. What is remembered is Tendulkar's 74 and the stunningly emotional scenes after the match, something that is seldom seen in any game of cricket.

India vs New Zealand Live Score 3rd Test, Day 1: Rohit Sharma is "Mumbaicha raja", according to the fans here. There would be few players in the world more familiar with conditions at the Wankhede in limited overs cricket than Rohit but there would be quite a few more familiar than him with this stadium Test cricket. That is because Rohit has played just one Test before at his domestic home ground.

India vs New Zealand Live Score 3rd Test, Day 1: Virat Kohli has the most runs at the Wankhede Stadium among the current lot of players. He has scored 469 runs in eight innings at 58.62 with three fifties and a century

India vs New Zealand Live Score 3rd Test, Day 1: There were lines drawn from the off stump and leg stump, huge and long team huddles and truck loads of net bowlers as a wounded India prepared for this Test. There have been instances of training sessions not being mandatory during Test series, particularly before the final match of a home series as India tend to have wrapped it all up by this point. Nothing of that sort this time. Every player attended all of the training sessions. The batters were trying sweep shots everywhere. The lines helped them identify which ball to attack. Rohit Sharma and Gautam Gambhir have said in the days since the defeat in the second Test that nothing has changed for India but the nets sessions in Mumbai speak otherwise.

India vs New Zealand Live Score 3rd Test, Day 1: Gautam Gambhir said in his press conference yesterday that maintaining the ability to defend with soft hands has become a challenge for batters in the wake of T20 cricket. "We need to defend better," Gambhir said. "I think that is something which is important. And especially on a turning track. Because if you've got confidence on your defence, a lot of things can be sorted. And that is something which we need to keep getting better, keep working on.

"Because, again, I'll keep going back to the same answer that a lot has to do with limited over-cricket and T20 cricket as well that when you're so used to muscling the ball, that you end up forgetting the soft hands and all that stuff, which probably used to happen eight or 10 years back. So that is something, that is why I said that a complete cricketer is a cricketer who plays T20 format really successfully and also the Test cricket really successfully. He can adapt his game. And that is what growth is."

India vs New Zealand Live Score 3rd Test, Day 1: The world was quite a different place the last time, and only time, India were whitewashed at home. That was a two-match Test series against South Africa with Allan Donald and Shaun Pollock leading the way in powering the Proteas to victories in the first Test at the Wankhede and the second at the Chinnaswamy Stadium. Apart from this, India have lost a one-off Test to England - which was dubbed the Golden Jubilee Test, in February 1980 at the Wankhede Stadium and that is pretty much as far as whitewashes in bilateral Test series goes for India in India.

India vs New Zealand Live Score 3rd Test, Day 1: The Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad may have taken over as the biggest spectacle in the country due to the sheer size of it but the romance of the Wankhede Stadium will always be one of a kind for Indian fans. It is where Sachin Tendulkar played his last Test, the stadium he called his home. It is where India won the 2011 World Cup. And well, it is the scene of numerous great IPL matches. Before all that, though, it was one of India's most frequent Test venues. That has changed in recent years though, with the BCCI awarding Test matches to smaller cities more often than the traditional centres like the Wankhede. The last time India hosted a team for a Test at the Wankhede was also New Zealand. Ajaz Patel took all 10 wickets in the Indian first innings but the hosts won by 372 runs.

India vs New Zealand Live Score 3rd Test, Day 1: India lost the second Test on a turner. It seems they have now asked for one that would turn even more at the Wankhede Stadium. Let's face it, the real reason why India couldn't win in Pune was that their two premier spinners were not in the races, which allowed New Zealand's batters to perform better than the hosts' batters. If the same remains the case here, well, the unthinkable as already happened in this series, who is to say it won't happen again.

India vs New Zealand Live Score 3rd Test, Day 1: Tom Latham(c), Devon Conway, Will Young, Rachin Ravindra, Daryl Mitchell, Tom Blundell(w), Glenn Phillips, Mitchell Santner, Tim Southee, Ajaz Patel, William O'Rourke, Jacob Duffy, Ish Sodhi, Matt Henry, Mark Chapman

India vs New Zealand Live Score 3rd Test, Day 1: Yashasvi Jaiswal, Rohit Sharma(c), Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, Rishabh Pant(w), Sarfaraz Khan, Ravindra Jadeja, Washington Sundar, Ravichandran Ashwin, Akash Deep, Jasprit Bumrah, Axar Patel, Dhruv Jurel, Mohammed Siraj, Kuldeep Yadav, KL Rahul

India vs New Zealand Live Score 3rd Test, Day 1: Most fans of working age today may have been in school when India last entered the final Test of a home series having already lost it. Those fans would've been even younger than that the last time India were whitewashed by a side at home. Rohit Sharma and Co. are looking to avoid both of these firsts. Stay tuned for more updates!