New Zealand beat India by seven wickets with 12 balls to spare in the fifth and final T20I at Seddon Park, Hamilton, but it was a dead rubber in terms of the series outcome — India had already done enough across the first three games to close out the five-match series 3-2 after New Zealand leveled things up with an 87-run win in the fourth match at Eden Park.
Batting first, India posted 191 for 8 in their 20 overs, built on contributions from Ishan Kishan (61) and Shreyas Iyer (50), with Adam Milne the pick of the New Zealand bowlers on 4 for 19 and Nathan Smith chipping in with 2 for 28. It was a competitive total on a true Hamilton surface, but not quite enough once New Zealand's top order got going.
Tim Seifert led the chase with 93, surviving a missed catch on 13 after Naman Dhir couldn't hold on in the field, and cashing in on the reprieve to take the game away from India before falling with 29 still needed. Glenn Phillips finished the job from there, ending unbeaten on 65 as New Zealand got home in the 18th over without further alarm.
Phillips's runs across the series took him to 341 for the five matches, reported widely as a new record for the most runs by a batter in a bilateral T20I series, bettering the previous mark held by England's Phil Salt. It is a notable personal return from a series his side still finished up losing, after Abhishek Sharma's century in Wellington had already put the series beyond reach with two matches still to play.
India won the first three matches of the tour — tight four-wicket wins in the first two games at Christchurch, then a comfortable six-wicket win in Wellington — to go 3-0 up before New Zealand hit back hard, first with Phillips's century-led 87-run win at Eden Park and now this seven-wicket win in Hamilton. The 3-2 final score flatters New Zealand's second half of the series more than it reflects how one-sided the tour looked after three matches.
Glenn Phillips closes the series as the standout fantasy performer across both squads on the back of his Hamilton century and the series-record run tally, with Tim Seifert's finishing-overs form also worth tracking into New Zealand's white-ball fixtures; for India, Ishan Kishan and Shreyas Iyer's returns in the series finale keep them in the picture ahead of the ODIs.
Follow the build-up to the ODI series on SportGod's coverage of India's squads for the New Zealand tour, track ball-by-ball updates on SportGod's live matches page, and build a squad on SportGod's games page.
Scores, individual figures, and the series result in this article are verified against same-day and freshly re-checked reporting as of November 1, 2026.
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