Pakistan bundled out for 124 in series opener against http://www.senore.com/Cricket/New-Zealand-c754
http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Wellington-c864 where the sides also played the second
Test match.
Pakistan’s Captain http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Shahid-Afridi-c2482 won the toss in today’s match and chose to bat first. The wicket didn’t seem to have too much assistance for the bowlers, but there was some pace and bounce as usual in the Wellington wicket.
The start to the innings was dismal for Pakistan as opener Mohammad Hafeez got out without scoring a run. He was neatly caught behind off Tim Southee, as the bowler was continuously nipping the ball-in, but the wicket ball went away from the batsman.
There were high hopes from Kamran Akmal upon his return to the one-day international (ODI) squad, but the wicketkeeper batsman failed to live-up to the hopes and got out after struggling to score just eight runs from 23 balls.
Youngsters Asad Shafiq and Umar Akmal didn’t help the cause of the team as they were dismissed early after scoring four runs and a duck respectively. The team was in trouble and all eyes of the Pakistani dressing-room were set on the pair of Younis Khan
and http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Misbah-ul-Haq-c1972.
Younis looked very impressive and batted very nicely for his 24 runs. However, he misjudged the pace of the ball and edged it to the wicketkeeper.
Afridi then joined Misbah at the crease, and by that stage Pakistan had lost their top five wickets for just 57 runs. The Pakistani captain didn’t look comfortable at all and almost mistimed every shot he played. He was out after scoring 15 runs and the
batsmen to follow him were also below par.
Pakistan’s Test Captain Misbah was the only batsman who looked to score runs. The problem for him was that he lost partners continuously at the other end. Misbah tried to take his team to a respectable total and ended-up scoring a steady half century.
He was the last wicket to fall for Pakistan but he gave the team some hope of putting up a fight in the match. However, the condition of the wicket doesn’t look favourable for Pakistan and the home team may chase down this total easily.
The star of the show for the Kiwi team was Southee as he took five wickets in the match. The other wicket-takers were Jacob Oram and Hamish Bennet with two and three wickets respectively.
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