^^ England not going with their first choice players. Buttler, Bairstow, Ali are out due to rotation policy, new star wicket keeper Ben foakes is out cause of hamstring issue. Jofra is out as well along with Stokes, still English team looks okay but its not their best team. This test series seems practice series to me. England trying their bench strength for the Ashes and match practice to Kiwis for the WTC finals, should be fun anyway.
From an article I found that ECB has given rest to those players who recently got back from IPL. And they want to check out the youngsters before the ashes. Perhaps, New Zealand took it as a warm up series before the WTC finals. Devon Conway scored double hundreds in his debut match while most other Kiwis batsman struggled to make score today. New Zealand found a good batsman before the WTC final. But I noticed that Conway was a bit nervous during his batting, hopefully he will gain confidence on his batting from upcoming matches.