IND vs NZ Champions Trophy 2025 Final: India Holds the Edge, New Zealand Faces Tough Challenge

India is in a strong position ahead of the IND vs NZ Champions Trophy 2025 final at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium. With more experience on the slow pitch and a well-settled team, can India capitalize on its advantage? Meanwhile, New Zealand faces challenges adapting to conditions. Read full match insights and predictions here.

India has the upper hand in the Champions Trophy 2025 final, trouble for New Zealand here. The Indian team will have the upper hand in the Champions Trophy final against New Zealand on Sunday at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium. The Indian team reached here on February 16 and has been in the same city since then. It won its three league matches played here against Bangladesh, Pakistan and New Zealand comfortably, while also easily defeated Australia in the semi-finals.

The Indian team has played on three different pitches here. It has got an idea of ​​​​playing on the slow pitch here. Not only this, the team had brought five spinners with it, in which it has fielded four spinners together in the last two matches. The Indian team has settled in the conditions here as compared to New Zealand.

IND vs NZ Champions Trophy 2025 Final: History haunts India

However, if we talk about history, the Champions Trophy final was played between India and New Zealand once in the year 2000, in which the Kiwis won. Not only this, the  New Zealand team also defeated India in the 2021 WTC final.

If we talk about New Zealand, then this team, which defeated the home team in the final of the tri-series in Pakistan, defeated Afghanistan by two wickets in a practice match in Karachi before the start of the Champions Trophy and after this, made a winning start by defeating host Pakistan by 60 runs in the first match of this tournament there.

Tangle stuck in Dubai

The Kiwis defeated Bangladesh by five wickets in Rawalpindi in another match of Group-A. However, after this, they had to come to play the third league match in Dubai, where the nature of the pitch was different from Pakistan. Coming here, the New Zealand team got stuck. India had scored 249 runs while playing first in that match, in which Mitchell Santner’s team was all out for just 205 runs while chasing the target.

The New Zealand team, which scored 320 runs in the first ODI in Karachi, came into form on a batting friendly pitch as soon as it reached Pakistan from Dubai and scored 362 runs for six wickets while playing against South Africa in the second semi-final. Rachin Ravindra and Kane Williamson scored centuries in this match. Chasing the target, the South African team could score only 312 runs in Lahore after losing nine wickets.

IND vs NZ Champions Trophy 2025 Final: India got recovery time

New Zealand may have won the semi-final by 50 runs, but there is a huge difference between the Dubai pitch and the Pakistan pitch. The New Zealand team reached Dubai on Thursday while India has been here for about 20 days. Rohit Sharma’s team played its last match on Tuesday. It has got two days of recovery time. The team will also practice on Friday.

Rachin’s reaction on the pitch

New Zealand fast bowler Matt Henry will need some time to get fully fit. Kiwi batsman Rachin Ravindra, who scored a century in the semi-final, said that we do not know much about the Dubai pitch. We played a match there against India and the ball was turning a lot then, while in another match we saw that the ball was not turning much.

We adapted to the conditions and played our game accordingly, and we will have to do the same on Sunday. We will look into it for the next two days and hope that there will be a good wicket for cricket there.

IND vs NZ Champions Trophy 2025 Final: We have to beware of Ravindra

Ravindra has scored two centuries in this Champions Trophy. However, in the match against India, he was out after scoring just six runs while trying to play an upper cut on Hardik Pandya’s ball. He is second in terms of scoring the most runs in this tournament.

England’s Ben Duckett has scored 227 runs, while he has 226 runs. Joe Root is third with 225 runs and Virat Kohli is fourth with 217 runs. Shreyas Iyer is sixth with 195 runs. However, India must beware of left-handed batsman Rachin in the final.

Ravindra, who played a brilliant innings of 108 runs in the semi-finals, said, ‘Whenever you bat, there is a possibility of getting out. Hopefully I will bat for a long time and continue to perform well for my team.’

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