Auckland, March 24: Buoyed by the victory in the first Test at Hamilton that ended a 33-year-drought in New Zealand, Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s men will look to turn on the heat in the second Test at the McLean Park in Napier from Thursday and settle the series as they look to rewrite history. India last won a Test series in this country back in 1967-68.

With a 10-wicket outcome under their belts, the Indians are obviously a confident lot and seem to be playing in the zone, much feared by the opponents. Apart from fielding, they have done well in all the other departments as the Seddon Park result shows.

The Indians are a relaxed bunch, so much at ease that they preferred to practice here in Auckland for a couple of days and are scheduled to travel to Napier only on match eve on Wednesday.

The team look unshakeable, evident from Tuesday’s staggered practice session followed by a fishing trip. Seven of them including Dhoni, Rahul Dravid, V.V.S. Laxman, L. Balaji, Dhawal Kulkarni and Murali Vijay headed off to the Great Barrier Reef island to fish with mental conditioning coach Paddy Upton. It was a 40-minute helicopter ride from Auckland and was designed to provide optimum relaxation.

Given their superb performances of late, the Indians are on song. With the top order on their game, Dhoni has very little to worry about. Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir have given the team flying starts which have been consolidated by the likes of Dravid, Laxman and the legendary Sachin Tendulkar, who has shown with his 160 in Hamilton that he can raise his game to extraordinary levels when the situation demands.

That the tail too has wagged quite merrily — Zaheer Khan got a half-century batting as low as No.9 — goes to show that the Indians bat too deep, much to the discomfort of the host bowlers.

With the ball, India have never had it so good. Zaheer and Ishant Sharma have delivered the goods and Munaf Patel has just done enough to banish fears of a gingerly third seamer. Add to that Harbhajan Singh’s form. He is bowling at his best and should be quite a handful for the Kiwis on the supposedly flat track at McLean Park.

On the other hand, New Zealand have problems. It has mainly been an individual show so far. Jesse Ryder and skipper Daniel Vettori pulled the side out of trouble with a century each in the first innings of the previous Test, Brendon McCullum, Daniel Flynn and Martin Guptill did their bit with the bat in the second. However, the Kiwis were not able to bat in pairs for long enough that is the essence of Test cricket.

Their bowling looks disastrous as well. With spearhead Kyle Mills firing blanks, the bowlers are a disappointed lot for sure.

Three wickets each from medium pacers Chris Martin and Iain O’Brien have been the only talking points so far with Vettori pulling his weight along. Vettori will most likely rope in off-spinner Jeetan Patel to share the bowling burden on a flat track. Whether he will be able to rise to the expectations remains to be seen.