I heard that Shane Bond is out of the rest of the Pakistan series by Twitter. I wasn’t expecting to ever read anything worthwhile there, so the news hit me like a shock.
To avoid major disappointment, I have tried quite hard to suppress any feelings of hope for the future of NZ cricket. For example, I have convinced myself that Jesse Ryder’s attitude will end up foreshortening his career. However, I had allowed myself to believe that we’d get to see Shane Bond play through at least this home summer, despite Shane’s terrible injury record. Blinded by optimism I guess.
So after musing very briefly in my previous post that we are too reliant on Shane Bond, we are now going to be hit by the reality of that. Apparently Tuffey and Southee will be coming into the team, which shows the measure of Shane Bond, having to be replaced by two bowlers. The return of these two players to the team is happy news in its own way, but in an effort to quash hope I have to note that I can’t see Daryl Tuffey stretching much beyond his record of an average of 30-odd and SR of 60-odd, nor do I see Tim Southee improving to a level much beyond that of Tuffey or Chris Martin.
God I love test cricket. Maybe I’m just caught up in the euphoria of the moment, but that feels like one of the special New Zealand wins. Certainly of recent times. Of course, in recent times any test win is special – we haven’t had a decent test win for a year and half.
But seriously, it was a good win. We put 100 runs on Pakistan after the 1st half of the match, then managed to hold on to our lead despite an embarrassing batting collapse in the second half. Mostly though, the match was special for the fight shown in the 4th innings. The guys just kept on trying even though there were several times when it looked like Pakistan were going to get away.
I rode quite a roller coaster today. I wasn’t feeling too confident with a target of only 250. It’s not a bad target to defend, but recent performances had left me lacking in optimism. The two early wickets in the Pakistan innings evened things up though, and from then it was several hours of fluctuating emotions as the game ebbed and flowed.
It looked to me like Umar Akmal and Shoaib Malik were going to steal the match. They got to within 100 and I could easily see them sticking around to the end or near enough to the end. We have seen New Zealand deflate in the 4th innings so often. So Malik’s wicket was important; it brought the game back within reach. However, it was Umar Akmal’s wicket, c&b Shane Bond, that was crucial. Getting rid of Umar before he could build another partnership was the winning of the match.
While that wicket was crucial, it was Bond’s overall performance that gave us the match. 8 wickets at a strike rate of 37. It is fantastic to have him back in the team. We are a different team with Bond leading our attack.
But that is such a troubling thought. That we should be so reliant on one player. We came no where near replacing him in the two years he was away and there are no firm prospects on the horizon.
But enough pessimism. At the moment I just want to glory in the win.
New Zealand are currently 147/8. Not good. This position is only saved by the fact that we had a 97 run lead after the Pakistan first innings. This gives us a lead of about 250. This isn’t likely to be pushed up by much, so that is the likely target for Pakistan to chase tomorrow.
At home New Zealand have set targets of 250+ 21 times. Most of those have lead to draws. Of the rest, New Zealand have defended the total 6 times and lost 3 times. Which sounds favourable, but a couple of the successful defences included complete cop-outs by the opposition (WI rolled for 77 in ’56 and Eng for 110 in ’08), so should probably be discounted as outliers. The record then is 4-3 and doesn’t look nearly as promising.
Most ominously, a notable example of a team reaching a 250+ target is Pakistan when they last toured in ’03, getting 277/3 in Wellington after NZ lead by 170 going into the 3rd innings.
Yesterday’s cricket in Dunedin was a day of tempered disappointments and achievements. Early wickets tempered by a strong comeback tempered by Taylor’s failure to get a hundred. A middle order collapse tempered by a lower-middle order recovery. Rather a frustrating day. New Zealand did barely enough to stay in the match, but at least the match is alive.
In Kanpur things were about as different as they could get. India, scoring 417/2 in one day, have taken a stranglehold on the match. In fact, they have probably already choked the match to death.
Why isn’t Shoaib Akhtar touring New Zealand? It’s rather hard to keep up with the endless series of speedhumps Akhtar hits in his career. I rather have the suspicion that it is merely an injury that is keeping him out of the team this time, not chucking or drugs or fighting or insubordination or genital warts.
However, Shoaib’s mundane fitness excuse wasn’t going to last for that much longer, so he had to contrive something new. In a seemingly desperate attempt to miss the tour to Australia, he got himself some liposuction. Seriously. Secretly too, though I don’t know how he was going to disguise the fact that he had lost 12 kg overnight.
Really, no one could have dreamed this up except Shaoib himself. It’s hard to even comment on it, in my case because I am laughing so much I can barely type, Cricket with Balls can’t do the story justice, the Bored Indians have to say it without words.
It’s going to take him 5 months to recover but the PCB are so incensed that he did it without informing them that his chances of every playing again are slim. He will be missed for everything he has brought to cricket.
So the test leg of the series against Pakistan is underway. I’ve added the tests to my schedule. If you scroll up a bit to the limited over matches, it looks like a normal tour, except for the jump from Dubai to Queenstown. I’m certainly considering all the matches against Pakistan as being part of a single series. As it is a rescheduling of the tour to Pakistan by New Zealand, I’ve been thinking of this series as a ‘home’ series for Pakistan that just happens to be taking place in away venues. Apparently Pakistan got to prepare the grounds in UAE and I also seem to recall that Pakistan will get the revenue from the series, as is normal for the home team.
Cricinfo however is treating the limited over and test legs as different series, Pakistan v NZ and NZ v Pakistan.
Also, surely the home team gets to choose the schedule. Now if I was writing the schedule, I’d start off with a warm-up in Queenstown, sure. However, there’s no way I would schedule the first test in Dunedin, with an average temperature of 12° in November, especially if I was from a country that typically averages in the 20s.
New Zealand tried two approaches in the 20-20 against Pakistan.
In the first, they went for the fire cracker approach. After the first couple of overs of their chase of 162 it looked like they’d get there in 10 overs. But, as happens when you burn brightly, they burnt out fast. In the end, they would have needed an extra 10 overs to get to the target. Actually, they would have needed an extra 10 batsmen.
In the second, they tried the slow smoulder. Starting slow and building. But in the end they built too slowly.
Pakistan, having lost the ODI series to New Zealand, are doing all they can to ensure they win the mantle of most messed up team. New Zealand were ahead by a nose, coming into this series with no coach or vice-captain. But Younis Khan has stolen a march by quitting as captain. It was only a matter of time really, but this time it looks like he was forced out by disgruntled team members (who, get this, Khan thinks might have thrown the 3rd ODI, just to spite him).
I don’t feel so bad about our coaching controversies now.
In the broader scheme of things, being shunted off the world circuit because of terrorism fears is another whole level of messed upedness. I’m not sure whether that gives Pakistan the crown over Zimbabwe, who are still in exile from test cricket. The West Indies and their contract dispute would be a not too distant third.
New Zealand beats Pakistan by 7 runs in the final match of the series. A narrow escape by New Zealand in defending 211, and very, very welcome; it would have been hard to stomach a loss after having the Pakistanis at 101/9.
I had thought the game lost when I was following it over my breakfast. With 5 overs to go and number 10 and 11, Mohammad Aamer and Saeed Ajmal, quite happily knocking the ball around at around about the required run rate, I was cursing Aamer and Ajmal. But once Ajmal fell in the last over, I was able to be more charitable and appreciate their partnership and what they had very nearly achieved. Together they scored more than half their team’s runs and individually ended with Pakistan’s two highest scores. All this while facing three of the world’s top 10 ODI bowlers. Aamer was well deserving of his man of the match.
But kudos to the Black Caps. Having failed to both bat and bowl in the first ODI, in the next two they showed they could BAT! and BOWL! Defending 211, in this age of batting power plays, is a fine achievement.
New Zealand defeats Pakistan in the second ODI, regaining 4th spot in the ICC rankings.
A 64-run win would have been seen as a spanking, if the previous match had not been a 138-run slaughter.
The match was most notable for Brendon McCullum’s 131 off 129, which contributed hugely to the win.
Considering what a star Brendon is, it is remarkable that this is his first century against a decent opposition (though it is one that any batsman would be happy to have in his record). Ruffling through the stats however suggests that though he hasn’t hit 100 very often, his contributions are important for New Zealand wins. McCullum’s average is twice as large in wins as it is in losses. Also, when he scores 50 or above, New Zealand is twice as likely to win.
For Pakistan, it almost seemed like they were waiting for Shahid Afridi to do for them what McCullum did for us. By the time Afridi came in (in the 27th over), the top order had muddled along, allowing the required run rate to touch 8/over. When he went first ball (c. Taylor, b. Styris), there was no oomph left.
