Rain ruins day 1 of New Zealand opener

The new ACA – VDCA stadium at Vishakapatnam did not make a very auspicious international debut. Only 10.1 overs were possible on a rain-interrupted first day in the three-day match between Board President's XI and the touring New Zealand side.

At the end of the day, Board President's XI were 23 for no loss.

With its close proximity to the Bay of Bengal and the surrounding hills there's always the possibility of rain at one of the most picturesque grounds in the country. For most of Friday it poured, and the prospects of play commencing looked bleak till the two skippers, Stephen Fleming of New Zealand and Board President's Virender Sehwag, decided to get on with the match at 1500 hours IST following a respite, despite rather poor playing conditions.

Sehwag won the toss for the home side and elected to bat. More importantly, he walked out to open the innings with Delhi opener Akash Chopra.

Sehwag had earlier mentioned that he would like to bat in the middle-order, but today could very well be a pointer towards the future.

New Zealand opted to rest their frontline medium-pacers, Daryl Tuffey and Jacob Oram, while Board President's XI rested Wasim Jaffer, Tinu Yohannan and Amit Uniyal.

Nothing untoward happened in the time play was possible, but whatever little was seen of Akash Chopra was impressive.

The Delhi opener, batting in cloudy, overcast conditions and fading light, never looked in any trouble, while Sehwag, at the other end, started as usual with a flowing boundary.

None of the Kiwi bowlers were particularly impressive.

Chopra (9 off 29 balls, 1 x 4) and Sehwag (9 off 37 balls, 2 x 4) will resume on Saturday at 0900 IST.

Both the captains agreed to start play 30 minutes before schedule to try and make up for lost time.

New Zealand: Stephen Fleming, Nathan Astle, Ian Butler, Robbie Hart, Craig McMillan, Michael Mason, Mark Richardson, Scott Styris, Daniel Vettori, Lou Vincent, Paul Wiseman.

Board President's XI: Virender Sehwag, Akash Chopra, S S Das, Ajay Ratra, V V S Laxman, Yuvraj Singh, Sreedharan Sriram, Amit Bhandari, Amit Mishra, Rameh Powar, Siddharth Trivedi.