Napier pitch may be to the liking of India's batsmen

The wickets for both the T20 games were drop-in pitches, which were very good batting tracks. However, no matter how good the tracks in this part of the world are, they are still very, very different from conditions in Asia.

I think India, not for the first time, paid for coming into a series outside home with no match practice. Now that the T20 games have given them some practice out there in the middle, I expect a much improved performance in the one-day series, especially from the Indian top order batsmen.

They better have got a feel for the conditions because the batsmen need to be in good nick today at Napier, which has the best wicket in all of New Zealand. If India bats first, they will need a score of 280-plus, possibly 300, to feel relatively safe. There is no doubt that they have the quality in their batting to achieve that, and the return of Sachin Tendulkar to the side will be a huge boost.

All of New Zealand is really excited about watching the Little Master in action, and when I spoke to Gary Kirsten the other day, he told me that Sachin had been really practising hard. He reckoned that he had faced 500 balls in the nets every day, and was really looking forward to getting into the action.

With a really batsman-friendly pitch, and short square boundaries, it puts an incredible pressure on the bowling attack. It would be a big setback for India if they don't have the services of Ishant Sharma today. Irfan Pathan has been on an off so far, but he will need to get it right tomorrow. He was off-colour in his first spell in the second T20 game, but when he got it right in his final two overs he almost took the game away from the hosts.

The Indian cricketers' charisma in general and the last T20 game in particular has really captured the imagination of the New Zealanders. It's hard to imagine in India how big the Super XIVs, the premier rugby tournament is back here. However, the T20 game and the build-up to the one-dayers has eclipsed even the rugby over the weekend.