‘Cold weather and a bit of grass’ – Boult’s heads up for Tigers

New Zealand ace paceman Trent Boult was looking for some blue skies and green grass on the wicket and he might have found just what he was looking for when he looked at the conditions at Dunedin yesterday where Bangladesh will take on the Kiwis in the first of the three ODIs.

Boult, who was looking to play ODIs after a year-off, felt that the Tigers will be facing conditions that they are not used to in the first ODI. Surprisingly, he felt the wicket's grass was a bit more like a Dhaka wicket.

"It's colder ... the nice blue skies and a bit of grass on the wicket prepared in Dhaka or somewhere where it is humid and a little bit of spin," he was quoted as saying by Otago Daily Times.

Boult said the Oval was a great place to play cricket.

"It is a good place to play cricket.

"The game we had here against the Australians was exciting and a great crowd.

"Good to see some youth down here following the game.

"I do enjoy coming down here and playing some cricket down here."

He said Test cricket was still his preference but he nonetheless enjoyed playing one-day cricket too.

"If the ball is swinging around and there is some grass on the wicket I'm a pretty happy man and I don't mind what format we're playing."

New Zealand coach Gary Stead said that his side would not be taking Bangladesh lightly.

New Zealand's last ODI was the first game of the abandoned series against Australia in Sydney in March last year. Australia won that game by 71 runs.

"We haven't played a lot of ODI cricket for a while but the good thing is domestically there has been the Ford Trophy recently and so there are guys coming off some good form in that," Stead was quoted as saying by RNZ.

"Sometimes ODI cricket internationally can be few and far between and so for us it's been a while, almost a year to the day that we played Australia and so we're looking forward to getting back into this format."

New Zealand is second in the ODI world rankings behind India, while Bangladesh are seventh.

Bangladesh have won their last six ODI's including beating the West Indies three-nil in January.

"We're looking forward to the challenge ahead, I think Bangladesh are an improving side and they seem to be developing more depth across their team as well so we certainly won't be taking them lightly and I think they've learnt to scrap better in the last three or four years."

The game in Dunedin starts at 11am (NZ time) on Saturday followed by Christchurch on Tuesday and Wellington on Friday. The three T20 internationals are to be played at Hamilton, Napier and Auckland.