Crucket

New Zealand lose to Pakistan by shit loads. That really was a bad game. Possibly it was just one of those games that come around now and then. Except that it joins the list of nuttings Pakistan has dealt us in world cups. This game also joins the regular procession of embarrasing collapses inflicted on us by Pakistan, that Cricinfo so kindly reminds us of by providing a link to a 2003 article about that very topic.

Also, even leaving aside the impact such a big loss will have on the team’s confidence, the size of the loss has put a big dent in our chances of qualifying for the semis. Pakistan outscored us by 7.59 runs per over to 5.35, a massive difference of 2.24 runs per over (actually leading to a net run rate in their favour of 2.64). This pretty much eradicates the 4.15 runs per over net run rate advantage we took from our own thrashing of Ireland.

This leaves the three leading teams in New Zealand’s group pretty much level pegging in terms of points and net run rate, as this table shows:

The remaining games are Sri Lanka v. Ireland, Pakistan v. Ireland and NZ v. Sri Lanka. The results of the first two are foregone conclusions, leaving the last a must win, just to ensure New Zealand ends on as many points as Sri Lanka and Pakistan. That’s fine. There are always must win games in tournaments. The problem is that Sri Lanka and Pakistan both have chances to seriously boost their net run rates with their games against Ireland, helping their chance of qualifying for the semis over New Zealand. So New Zealand will not only need to beat Sri Lanka on Tuesday, but to beat them heavily.