New Zealand beat Pakistan by seven wickets in the first One-Day International (ODI) at Wellington. Pakistan will have to bounce back well in the next game at Napier ahead of ICC World Cup 2015. Varun Arora lists a few highlights of the one-sided game.
Pakistan’s batting woes – Pakistan again failed to put up a challenging total due to a top-order collapse. Opener Mohammad Hafeez was out in the very first over of the match, Ahmed Shehzad and Younis Khan soon followed, which reduced them to 32 for three in the 12th over. Skipper Misbah-ul-Haq then joined Haris Sohail and rebuilt the innings to a certain extent.
Shahid Afridi’s 29-ball 76 – Afridi was in some strange mindset on Saturday when he came out to bat after the dismissal of Sarfraz Ahmed when Pakistan were tumbling at 127 for six. Everyone would have expected him to play a cautious and a watchful innings from here and cement a partnership with Misbah but Afridi went blitzkrieg from the first ball, smashing everything which came in his zone. He completed his half-century off 21 balls and went on to score 67 which included three sixes and nine boundaries.
Misbah and Afridi’s 71-run partnership – Things appeared really bleak for Pakistan until Afridi arrived and started smashing everything in different directions and slowly Pakistan emerged from a spot of bother to reach a respectable score. This crucial seventh-wicket partnership was the reason Pakistan were able to reach the 200-run landmark.
Grant Elliot’s Man of the Match performance – If figures of three for 26 in 4.3 overs weren’t good enough, Elliot followed it up with 68-ball 64, which sealed the match for New Zealand. Elliott has emerged as a useful and handy option for New Zealand as he was been brilliant with both bat and ball. He picked up crucial wickets of Misbah and Umar Akmal, which cut the run-flow to a large extent.
Grant Elliot and Ross Taylor’s match-winning partnership – Pakistan had snapped three wickets- of Tom Latham, Brendon McCullum and Martin Guptill to put New Zealand at 101 for three. New Zealand still had a long way to go as they needed another 100 runs to win but Taylor and Elliott played with utmost calm and took the team to an easy seven-wicket win.
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(Varun Arora is a reporter with CricketCountry. He started as a medium-fast bowler, converted to an opening batsman, but finally settled with his passion of writing about the game. His Twitter handle is @varunjgd)
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