Yeah, it must suck to be an Aussie sometimes.

I’ll tell you what, we should consider this summer a big long test tri-series between Oz, NZ and Pakistan.

And it stayed a contest right up to the last session. Win or lose, you’d want every test to come down to the wire like this.

From NZ’s perspective, Malik’s wicket had to come when it did. Pakistan still enough fire power in the Akmal brothers to get home though. I think at the point the test became quite delicately balanced.

Given that the two teams are looking so well matched I’m really looking forward to the rest of the series.

Well you have your own perspective on this I suppose. That shouldn’t detract from the match though. In the end one team won and one team lost. Even if you want to be negative and claim that the team that lost simply succumbed to their weaknesses, you also have to realise that the team that won managed to overcome their own weaknesses sufficiently.

However, I have to disagree that there is a sense of deja vu in this match. If this match had run true to form one of two things would have happened. Either the NZ bowlers would have failed to wrap up the Pakistani tail in the 1st Pakistani innings and thus surrendered a 1st innings lead or they would have failed to crack the top order in Pakistan’s 2nd innings, thus allowing Pakistan to stroll to victory. That neither of these occurred makes this a unique test of late. Really, I cannot remember the last time New Zealand defended a gettable total.

As I’ve said elsewhere, there is much to celebrate about this test.

in the end more than nz winning it fighting it was pakistan who surrendered their last 5 wickets for 30 odd runs to do their own classical collapse which they do almost every test these days…

before the news of bond broke i was wondering on BCC! that it would be interesting to see how long bond can carry the attack on his shoulder the way nz were resorting to him … and then his news of injury came (a day after) which was not obviously surprising but sad and unfortunate…

probably it will be safer to say that win cost nz more than the loss to pak… its going to be interesting how this series pans out…

I’m an Oz fan and the Windies were mostly so feeble that I can’t glory in that win at all.

Vettori and co deserve a break and it is grand to have Bond back in test cricket.