Daniel Vettori motivates his team to face Pakistan bravely
New Zealand captain, Daniel Vettori, gives moral support to his team saying that they need not fear the in-form Pakistani skipper, http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Shahid-Afridi-c2482, and his team in their ICC World Cup 2011 group match.
"We have to adapt to all sorts of conditions in the ICC Cricket World Cup and I haven't given any thought to the kind of wicket we will play on here. We did play a warm-up game here in Kandy so we are expecting a little bounce on the surface", said Vettori.
Pakistan, skipper Afridi, showed a consistent performance in the three matches of the tournament and became the highest wicket-taker with figures of 24 in the games played so far.
His leg-spin helped his team in matches against Kenya, Sri Lanka, and, Canada. In his first match, he finished with figures of 5/16 from his quota of overs and became the first Pakistani player to achieve this figure in World Cups.
In the second match against http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Canada-c748 and has been awarded man of the matches twice in this tournament.
New Zealand have played three matches so far against http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Australia-c746 and Zimbabwe and have earned a total of four points out of three matches.
Black Caps’ skipper, Vettori, admitted that they have been lacking consistency in their performance and said that if they overcome their weaknesses they will have more chances.
Although, the Pallekele stadium pitch is new for both the competing teams but still Vettori hopes that it will favour the batsmen.
Pakistan and http://www.senore.com/Cricket/New-Zealand-c754 last faced each other in a six-match One-Day International (ODI) series last month where Pakistan came out as winners by 3-2, under the captaincy of Afridi.
Vettori, who will step down from captaincy after the tournament is over, said that their competition with Pakistan is likely to be tough and exciting as both the teams have met frequently before the World Cup 2011.
Showing high expectations from their key batsmen, Ross Taylor, Vettori said that the best players are those, who play a considerable role in World Cup wins, and http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Taylor-c92915 is one of their good players and has faith in his abilities.
"I expect him at one stage in this tournament to win a game for us and hopefully it's tomorrow", said Vettori.
Apart from Taylor, Brendom McCullum and Martin Guptill, gave a decent performance in by hitting half-centuries in New Zealand’s win over minnow http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Zimbabwe-c3045.
http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Pakistan-c755 is leading group ‘A’ with a maximum six points out of three matches.
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