Every few years, the Kiwis go through the motions only to return home to undergo a post-mortem examination of sorts before their dossier is chucked into a filing cabinet until the next tour.
It's a given that spinners such as Ravichandran Ashwin and reverse-swing merchants in the mould of Mohammed Shami are world-class bowlers, so if it's their backyard look out.
So why aren't the Black Caps bowlers able to extract that sort of purchase from the subcontinent wickets?
The answer actually lies in New Zealand.
We simply don't prepare wickets here, even at club level, to offer tweakers traction.
The reluctance to provide strips conducive to spin is like a Shami delivery moving against the grain of conventional wisdom.
Not only does it rob fans of what is considered the most romantic aspect of cricket but also deprives the likes of Mitchell Santner, Mark Craig and Ish Sodhi of crucial buildup to tests and ODIs.
Santner looks the most adept in Kanpur but the reality is his stride's too far from his potential.
Fellow offspinner Craig is underachieving and so is Sodhi, one of a handful of legspinners showing potential globally, but the pair's lack of decent preparation is blatantly obvious.
Craig's tour is over due to a side strain and some are already whipping up propaganda that Sodhi's position is under threat.
The harsh reality is internationals become training grounds for Kiwi spinners to refine the art of putting flight and trajectory into their deliveries.
It's not like New Zealand Cricket didn't know what was going to be served on the India tour and it had more than ample time to direct groundsmen around domestic and international venues here to manufacture wickets that offer seamers some swing and seam before gradually deteriorating on day 3 and 4 to bring tweakers and reverse swingers into play.
Allrounder Ravindra Jadeja, the turning point of the test with his five wickets, attributed his man-of-the-match performance to bowling on "unprepared wickets" as a youngster.
"There is no mystery. We didn't have well-prepared grounds and pitches and those are the kinds I've been brought up on where there were no groundsmen and we were just practising," the left-armer, who is seen as a game breaker, told scribes.
Ditto Shami, who reportedly honed his reverse swing by default as a youngster because his village team refused to hand him a shiny cherry.
Having former international leggie Anil Kumble will no doubt be a huge asset to India, who used footmarks for a dramatic change of fortune when it appeared Kiwi captain Kane Williamson and opener Tom Latham were forging a match-defining partnership.
Funnily enough umpires were warning Kiwi bowlers not to run on the wicket.
It's inexcusable to hear coaches and captains in New Zealand justifying selection, at any level of cricket, at the expense of spinners because it's a "pelter of a wicket".
But then what is their alternative?
They should employ tweakers on benign batting strips so they can focus on beating batsmen in the air, albeit by reducing the number of revolutions on the ball and conceding drift.
It isn't adequate preparation but that may well be the difference between winning and losing in the second test at Eden Gardens, Kolkata, starting tomorrow.
You see, embarking on subcontinent tours without savvy spinners is tantamount to going there as a tourist without inoculation.
During Mark Greatbatch's interim reign as national coach spinners were identified and a template created to groom them.
Instead of keeping Craig, Sodhi and Co as pooper scoopers during the summer circus here, they should have been shipped out as part of a NZC XI to play at domestic or even club level in the subcontinent to refine their craft.
Of course, batsmen in the side would also have prospered immensely. That means giving up lucrative county cricket offers.
The irony is Hesson has called in a bloke, Jeetan Patel, who has once more proven his worth in county cricket.
The 36-year-old, who wasted summers in the shadows of retired Daniel Vettori, is without doubt a conscience call and a reminder of a myopic era.
Dumping Sodhi will make as much sense as keeping opening batsman Martin Guptill on what is forecast to be wicket that'll offer less turn than Kanpur.
The top six in a team are chosen to make runs, fullstop, and Guptill has passed the deadline on red-ball cricket.
Guptill is no game-breaker with his offspin so it'll be interesting to see if Williamson rolls up his sleeves if the opener's retained in the hope he gets lucky in Kolkata.
With the pressure of batting and captaincy, does the grafter need further scrutiny on his bowling after he was suspended in 2014 during a phase when Saeed Ajmal (Pakistan), Sunil Narain (Windies) and Pragyan Ohja (India) had to remodel their actions too?