New Zealand defeat Pakistan to win series
http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Pakistan-c755 lost the Twenty20 series after they failed to chase the total of 185 runs posted by New Zealand. Pakistan lost the first match at the Boxing Day by five wickets and they continued to struggle in the second match today.
The start to the innings was good once again for Pakistan as Mohammad Hafeez played some brilliant strokes. Pakistan scored 24 runs in two overs when Captain http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Shahid-Afridi-c2482 got out on the last ball of the second over. Ahmed Shehzad carried on the innings
with Hafeez and took the score to 68 for the loss of 1 wicket. Shehzad was the next to go back to the pavillion. He scored 15 runs.
After that, the wickets kept falling at regular intervals and the Pakistan team never really looked like getting to the target that was set by New Zealand. Hafeez top scored with 46 runs and apart from that only Umar Akmal managed to score in the twenties.
The junior Akmal scored 26 off 32 balls.
The attack bowlers for New Zealand were not able to put pressure on Pakistan in the initial stages of the innings but the spinners stuck to their task and took wickets to restrict Pakistan to 146. Nathan McCullum was the pick of the bowlers; he took four
wickets for sixteen runs in his four overs. The hat-trick boy Tim Southee also grabbed a couple of wickets to support McCullum.
Pakistan will be disappointed with the overall performance of the team since there were no noteworthy performances from either the bowling or the batting department. After winning the toss and electing to field, Afridi would have hoped that his bowlers could
restrict the New Zealand team within 150 runs but New Zealand managed to get away scoring 185 runs.
The http://www.senore.com/Cricket/New-Zealand-c754 team will be extremely happy after returning to winning ways, something they haven’t been able to do in the recent past. They will look forward to a whitewash now and with the way things are going for Pakistan, that seems an easy task for
them.
Both the teams will face each other in the final Twenty20 match on the 30th
of December. Pakistan have been hurt badly in 2010 by many controversies and they would like to win the last match they play in 2010 to give something to their fans to cheer about.
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