Everything you need to know about the India-New Zealand T20I

Positives India can take from day one of the post-in-tournament-qualifying phase of the World T20:

1. They will probably improve with the bat as the tournament progresses.

2. These things happen in T20. And other forms of cricket. But especially T20.

3. India have selflessly assuaged the pain of the Associate nations, who have been so unceremoniously defenestrated from the competition. They do not, after all, need more exposure to high-level T20 to learn and improve. India's performance showed that, if anything, they need less exposure, and fewer games. The Indian XI had collectively played more than 1700 T20 matches, including 400 internationals, yet contrived to bat with the calm, experienced, strong-headed technical and tactical assurance of a medieval granny in a Formula One race. A less experienced side would surely have coped significantly better.

4. If you are going to get hammered in a tournament opener on home soil, do it against New Zealand. Everyone loves New Zealand.

5. Everyone also loves a stat. Or, if they do not, they should learn to love a stat. Spinning India out in limited-overs cricket is not something that is often achieved. In their 68 previous T20I innings, India had never lost more than five wickets to spinners, and only once in 48 matches this decade had they lost even four wickets to slow bowlers.

In 50-over cricket, they have lost nine batsmen to spin only once in almost 900 matches, when then world champions Sri Lanka tweaked them out for the significantly less rubbish score of 238, in Colombo, back in 1997.

New Zealand had never taken more than five wickets through spin in T20Is before (and had not taken more than four since May 2010). In ODI cricket, the most wickets by Kiwi tweakers in an innings is six.

The only previous occasions on which spinners took nine in a T20I innings were when Sri Lanka's Mendis non-brothers, Ajantha and Jeevan, bamboozled Zimbabwe in Hambantota in September 2012, taking 9 for 32 in eight overs between them; and when Zimbabwe spun Canada out cheaply in King City in October 2008, in the third-place play-off of the T20 Canada competition (a tournament which, I humbly admit, had somehow escaped my attention until this stat).

The Nagpur Twirlageddon was the first time India have lost all ten wickets to bowlers in a T20I. They had been all out on five previous occasions, but always with at least one run-out.

It was also, by my reckoning, only the second T20 match to begin Six-Wicket, as Martin Guptill planked R Ashwin straight for six, before Ashwin trapped him in front (or nearly in front) next ball, given out by Umpire Kumar Dharmasena - the self-same Kumar Dharmasena who took two Indian wickets out of the nine pocketed by Sri Lanka's spinners in that 1997 Colombo ODI.

The only other previous T20 match to begin in such style - the 2013 Zimbabwean domestic T20 competition final between Mashonaland Eagles and Mountaineers. The No. 1 batsman who departed with six off two balls that day - Cephas Zhuwao. Yes, that Cephas Zhuwao - the self-same Cephas Zhuwao who, in his other role as an occasional spinner, took the final Canadian wicket in that unforgettable King City spin rout in 2008. Truly, it is a small world.

6. When India triumphed in the inaugural World T20 in 2007, they were winless after three matches (a no-result, a tie and a loss), so a dreadful start would appear to be a non-negotiable part of India winning World T20s. They are not alone. The 2009 champions, Pakistan, lost their opening match by 48 runs - one more than India's margin of drubbing by New Zealand. England, 2010 winners, began their ultimately successful tournament with an eight-wicket spanking by West Indies, who themselves lost their first game two years later en route to becoming champions. Only 2014 winners Sri Lanka began with victory; they lost their third match, to England, which proves that winning all your matches is a recipe for disaster in World T20s - champions always lose.

7. Mithali Raj batted well. India ended with a Won 1 Lost 1 record after Tuesday's cricket, after their women gave a dominant team performance against Bangladesh, becoming the first batting team to post four individual scores of 35 or more in a women's T20 International innings (only three men's teams have done so).

Raj began with a surgically precise glide finessed between two cover fielders for three, an old-time late cut for four, and a back-foot force to the cover boundary timed so perfectly the ball probably did not even notice it had been hit. As Hashim Amla showed in his high-speed dismemberment of England's attack in Johannesburg last month, when at one point he "hit" seven fours and a six in the space of 11 balls whilst appearing to engage his muscles as much as he would when opening a sachet of ketchup or stroking a sleeping cat, there is still a place for beauty amidst the carnage in T20.