On the third morning at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru, India were 46 all out. Not 46 for six. All out, in 31.2 overs, the lowest total India have ever made in a home Test, and the number that opens any honest india national cricket team vs new zealand national cricket team timeline. New Zealand had not won a Test in India in 36 years. Twelve days later they had won three.
What followed over the next seventeen months is the strangest stretch these two sides have played, because the answer to who is better depends entirely on which format you ask about. New Zealand own the Test record outright. India have won every knockout match that mattered. The white-ball ledger in between is genuinely, uncomfortably split.
That matters now because India land in New Zealand on October 22 for the largest inbound tour New Zealand Cricket has ever staged. Twelve internationals across five T20Is, five ODIs and two Tests, running to December 1, and India’s first Test cricket in New Zealand since 2019. The Eastern Herald covered the schedule announcement in June. What follows is the record they carry into it: fourteen matches, every one dated and checked.
The full india national cricket team vs new zealand national cricket team timeline, match by match
Fourteen completed internationals between October 2024 and March 2026. India have won eight, New Zealand six.
| Date | Format | Venue | Scores | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16 to 20 Oct 2024 | Test | Bengaluru | IND 46 & 462; NZ 402 & 110/2 | New Zealand by 8 wickets |
| 24 to 26 Oct 2024 | Test | Pune | NZ 259 & 255; IND 156 & 245 | New Zealand by 113 runs |
| 1 to 3 Nov 2024 | Test | Mumbai | NZ 235 & 174; IND 263 & 121 | New Zealand by 25 runs |
| 2 Mar 2025 | ODI, Champions Trophy group | Dubai | Not available | India by 44 runs |
| 9 Mar 2025 | ODI, Champions Trophy final | Dubai | NZ 251/7; IND 254/6 | India by 4 wickets |
| 11 Jan 2026 | ODI | Vadodara | NZ 300/8; IND 306/6 | India by 4 wickets |
| 14 Jan 2026 | ODI | Rajkot | IND 284/7; NZ 286/3 | New Zealand by 7 wickets |
| 18 Jan 2026 | ODI | Indore | NZ 337/8; IND 296 | New Zealand by 41 runs |
| 21 Jan 2026 | T20I | Nagpur | IND 238/7; NZ 190/7 | India by 48 runs |
| 23 Jan 2026 | T20I | Raipur | NZ 208/6; IND 209/3 | India by 7 wickets |
| 25 Jan 2026 | T20I | Guwahati | NZ 153/9; IND 155/2 | India by 8 wickets |
| 28 Jan 2026 | T20I | Visakhapatnam | NZ 215/7; IND 165 | New Zealand by 50 runs |
| 31 Jan 2026 | T20I | Thiruvananthapuram | IND 271/5; NZ 225 | India by 46 runs |
| 8 Mar 2026 | T20I, World Cup final | Ahmedabad | IND 255/5; NZ 159 | India by 96 runs |
| Fourteen completed internationals. India 8, New Zealand 6. Scores for the 2 March 2025 Champions Trophy group match are not carried here. Green marks an India win. | ||||
October and November 2024: the whitewash that reframed everything
New Zealand arrived in October 2024 having been beaten 2-0 in Sri Lanka a month earlier, without Kane Williamson for the opener, and were priced accordingly.
Bengaluru broke the pattern in a session. India, sent in under cloud, collapsed for 46 in the first innings, and Rachin Ravindra’s 134 in reply pushed New Zealand to 402 and a lead of 356. India’s 462 second time around was a substantial recovery from a position that had no precedent, but it left New Zealand only 107 to win. Ravindra took the match award.
Pune was Mitchell Santner’s. A haul across both innings that India could not survive on a surface they had asked for, and a 113-run win that sealed New Zealand’s first series victory in India in seventy years of trying.
Mumbai was the one India should have taken. New Zealand made 235 and 174. India needed 147 in the fourth innings. Ajaz Patel, who took all ten in an innings at the same ground in 2021, then took six for 57, and India were bowled out for 121 to lose by 25 runs. Patel finished with match figures of 11 for 160. Will Young was named player of the series.
India had never been whitewashed 3-0 at home. South Africa swept a two-Test series in 2000, but nothing longer, and no side had beaten India in a home series since England’s tour of 2012-13. Sky Sports called it one of the biggest upsets in Test history.
March 2025: India take the Champions Trophy back
Four months later the same two teams met twice in eight days in Dubai, and the result inverted.
The group match on March 2 decided who topped Group A. India won it by 44 runs and sent New Zealand into the semi-final against South Africa. Both sides came through.
The final on March 9 was tighter than the margin suggests. New Zealand batted first on a slow two-paced surface and made 251 for seven, built on Daryl Mitchell’s 63, the slowest fifty of his ODI career, and Michael Bracewell’s unbeaten 53. Rohit Sharma answered with 76 off 83 balls and a 105-run opening stand with Shubman Gill. Bracewell then trapped Virat Kohli lbw for one, four balls after Glenn Phillips had removed Gill with a leaping catch at short cover, and the chase wobbled. Ravindra Jadeja settled it with a boundary with seven balls to spare, as Al Jazeera reported from Dubai. India won by four wickets and a third Champions Trophy.
Rohit ended the speculation about his ODI retirement in the post-match press conference rather than in the middle. That decision still shapes India’s fifty-over planning eighteen months later.
January 2026: New Zealand win an ODI series in India for the first time
The bilateral tour in January produced the most interesting fortnight of the whole india national cricket team vs new zealand national cricket team timeline, because both sides won a series.
Vadodara went to India by four wickets, chasing 301 with an over to spare, Kohli taking the match award. Rajkot went to New Zealand by seven wickets. Indore decided it. Mitchell made 137 and Phillips 106 in a total of 337 for eight, and Kohli’s 124, a record-extending 54th ODI century, was not enough as India were bowled out for 296 with four overs unused.
That was New Zealand’s first ODI bilateral series win on Indian soil. Mitchell finished with 352 runs across the three matches and took the ICC Men’s Player of the Month award for January.
Read the two series together and they say something neither says alone. Over eight white-ball matches in twenty-one days, New Zealand were the better side in the fifty-over format and were beaten comprehensively in the twenty-over one, with largely overlapping squads.
March 8, 2026: the T20 World Cup final in Ahmedabad
They met again five weeks later with a trophy on it, and the twenty-over gap held.
New Zealand won the toss at the Narendra Modi Stadium and bowled. Sanju Samson and Abhishek Sharma took 92 off the first six overs, the highest powerplay of the tournament and the joint-highest in T20 World Cup history. Samson made 89 off 46, the largest individual score in any men’s T20 World Cup final. Abhishek made 52 off 21, Ishan Kishan 54 off 25, and India finished on 255 for five, the highest total a final has produced.
Seifert hit 52 off 26 in reply and it never threatened to be enough. Bumrah returned four for 15, the first four-wicket haul in a T20 World Cup final, Axar Patel took three for 27, and New Zealand were bowled out for 159 with an over unused. India won by 96 runs in front of 86,824 people, Al Jazeera reported from Ahmedabad. Bumrah took the match award, Samson the tournament award for 321 runs from five innings.
India became the first side to defend a men’s T20 World Cup, the first to win three, and the first host nation to win one. New Zealand have now lost both finals they have reached.
What the india vs new zealand timeline looks like by format
Split fourteen matches by format and the pattern is sharper than any aggregate.
| Format | Matches | India | New Zealand | Series and tournament outcomes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tests | 3 | 0 | 3 | New Zealand won the 2024 series in India 3-0 |
| ODIs | 5 | 3 | 2 | India won the 2025 Champions Trophy final; New Zealand won the January 2026 bilateral series 2-1 |
| T20Is | 6 | 5 | 1 | India won the January 2026 bilateral series 4-1 and the 2026 T20 World Cup final |
| All formats | 14 | 8 | 6 | India have won all four matches with a trophy or a group placing at stake |
| Green marks the leading side in each row. The ODI column includes both 2025 Champions Trophy meetings. | ||||
The Test column is the outlier that will not go away. New Zealand have won all three, by eight wickets, 113 runs and 25 runs. India, meanwhile, have won all four matches in which something was actually being decided: two Champions Trophy fixtures and, by 96 runs, a World Cup final.
What happens next: India in New Zealand, October 22 to December 1
New Zealand Cricket has never hosted an inbound tour this large. Twelve matches across five venues, with the two Tests at the Basin Reserve in Wellington and Hagley Oval in Christchurch, as New Zealand Cricket set out when it published the summer schedule.
| Leg | Dates | Matches | Venues |
|---|---|---|---|
| T20I series | 22 Oct to 1 Nov | 5 | Christchurch (2), Wellington, Auckland, Hamilton |
| ODI series | 4 to 15 Nov | 5 | Auckland, Wellington, Hamilton (2), Tauranga |
| 1st Test | 19 to 23 Nov | 1 | Basin Reserve, Wellington |
| 2nd Test | 27 Nov to 1 Dec | 1 | Hagley Oval, Christchurch |
| Twelve matches in all, the largest inbound tour in New Zealand Cricket history and India’s first Tests in New Zealand since 2019. Source: New Zealand Cricket. | |||
The five ODIs carry the most freight beyond the rivalry itself, arriving with the 2027 ODI World Cup roughly a year out and India’s senior batting order still unsettled, a tension The Eastern Herald examined when senior players took their concerns past the head coach to the BCCI.
The Test half is the part nobody can model. Both sides have rebuilt since Mumbai. Kane Williamson retired in June, mid-series in England, and New Zealand’s batting has not yet shown what it looks like without him across a home summer. India’s Test XI has turned over just as heavily, and India have not played a Test in New Zealand for seven years, on surfaces about as far from Pune and Mumbai as the game offers. The 2024 whitewash was built on spin bowling that will matter far less in Wellington in November.
So the honest reading of the india national cricket team vs new zealand national cricket team timeline is that it does not project. It tells you New Zealand can beat India in Indian conditions, which almost nobody believed in October 2024, and that India have not lost a knockout match to them since. It does not tell you what happens at Hagley Oval on November 27, and there is no version of the last seventeen months that does.
India vs New Zealand timeline: frequently asked questions
What is the India vs New Zealand head-to-head record since 2024?
Fourteen completed internationals between October 2024 and March 2026. India have won eight and New Zealand six. New Zealand lead the Tests 3-0, India lead the T20Is 5-1, and India lead the ODIs 3-2.
When did New Zealand whitewash India in Tests?
October and November 2024. New Zealand won at Bengaluru by eight wickets, at Pune by 113 runs and at Mumbai by 25 runs. It was the first time India had been swept 3-0 in a home Test series and New Zealand’s first series win in India.
Who won the 2026 T20 World Cup final between India and New Zealand?
India, by 96 runs at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad on March 8, 2026. India made 255 for five, New Zealand were bowled out for 159, and Jasprit Bumrah took four for 15.
Has New Zealand ever won an ODI series in India?
Yes, once. New Zealand won the January 2026 series 2-1, sealing it with a 41-run win in Indore. It was their first ODI bilateral series win in India.
When do India next play New Zealand?
India tour New Zealand from October 22 to December 1, 2026, for five T20Is, five ODIs and two Tests. It is the largest inbound tour in New Zealand Cricket history and India’s first Test series there since 2019.
What was India’s 46 all out?
India’s first innings in the opening Test at Bengaluru in October 2024, made in 31.2 overs. It is the lowest total India have recorded in a home Test.
Who has scored the most runs in this fixture recently?
The standout individual returns are Daryl Mitchell’s 352 runs across the January 2026 ODI series, Sanju Samson’s 89 off 46 in the World Cup final, and Virat Kohli’s 124 at Indore, his 54th ODI century.
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