The New Zealand team continued to struggle in the third match of the five-match series against http://www.senore.com/Cricket/India-c750.
India won the toss again and elected to field first as they did in the last match. The New Zealand team would have been hopeful of a better start as Brendon McCullum had returned to the side after some injury problems.
Things turned out to be worse for New Zealand as McCullum fell on the very first ball he faced by Zaheer Khan. After the fall of the first wicket, the team continued to struggle and kept on losing wickets at regular intervals. None of the top order batsmen
was able to score big runs. However, James Franklin and Nathan McCullum tried to rescue the visitors by sharing a 94-run partnership.
The returning Brendon McCullum was unable to impress as he got out on the very first ball of Zaheer Khan he faced. Kane Williamson and Scott Styris got starts but both of them were unable to capitalise on the starts they got.
In the 30th over, New Zealand were 106 for the loss of seven wickets and things were looking bad for the visitors. At that stage it didn’t look like the New Zealand team would bat the complete 50 overs. But James Franklin and Nathan McCullum had
other plans.
Both the batsmen steadied the innings and took their team out of trouble. They helped their team to go past the 200-run mark and post a decent total on the board. Nathan McCullum got out on 43 runs which came off 53 balls including four boundaries.
Kyle http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Mills-c76321 and James Franklin then guided their team to a modest total of 224 at the end of the fiftieth over. The main stay for New Zealand was Franklin who anchored the innings and scored an unbeaten 72 off 108 balls. His innings included five fours and
one six.
Returning Zaheer http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Ravichandran-Ashwin-c84208 and Yusuf Pathan grabbed a couple of wickets each to restrict the visitors to a modest score.
This is the third match of the series and if India goes on and wins, they would win the series. New Zealand would expect their bowlers to provide some early breakthroughs to the team. The visitors are low on confidence and have struggled to perform on the
Asian soil. This series would hurt the confidence of the New Zealand team if they are unable to perform well in this match and the remaining two. The series would have been crucial for their side to determine the World Cup squad but they wouldn’t have expected
a one sided affair.
It would be interesting to see whether the http://www.senore.com/Cricket/New-Zealand-c754 bowlers are able to bounce back in the series or not. A lot would be expected from their Captain Daniel Vettori. Neither the bowling nor the batting has been able to live up to the hopes of the New Zealand
team in the past couple of months. This match would be the right time to bounce back and regain some confidence.
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