http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Pakistan-c755’s tour of New Zealand: Ross Taylor overjoyed by T20 series win
New Zealand’s stand-in captain Ross Taylor is overjoyed with his team’s win in their T20 series against Pakistan. The hosts recorded a crushing 39-run win over the Pakistanis at Seddon Park.
The Black Caps went to bat first on a wicket that offered some seam movement early on – they lost opener Jessie Ryder on the first ball of the match. But they came back strongly after this initial setback, amassing
runs at a run rate of more than eight runs per over and eventually posting a huge T20 total of 185 runs for the loss of seven wickets. Martin Guptill was the highest scorer, with 44 runs. James Franklin, Taylor, Scott Styris and http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Peter-McGlashan-c2178 all made solid
contributions.
The Pakistanis traveled all around the park. Umar Gul, who had previously enjoyed an impeccable record against New Zealand, was hit for more than 40 runs in three overs, including 24 runs off one over.
The Kiwis’ performance with the bat pleased Taylor no end – the Black Caps have previously endured a wretched run in limited-overs cricket, losing consecutive series to Bangladesh and India without winning a single
match in the process.
"All good sides win the key moments and we did that today," http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Taylor-c92915 said. "With the bat, we've lost wickets at crucial moments [in the past] and it's something we're not doing at the moment.”
Towards the end of the innings, New Zealand smashed 73 runs in four overs. "There were quite a few crucial stages that we won and that was one of them,” said Taylor of this phase of the innings. “We scored 110
or so off the last ten overs and that was pretty good going on this ground.”
When the Pakistanis came in to bat, they were kept on a very short leash by Kiwi spinners Nathan McCullum and http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Luke-Woodcock-c1860. McCullum, with his four wickets for 16 runs, was the Man of the Match. Debutant Woodcock
provided worthy assistance, keeping the Pakistani batsmen in check and giving away only 20 runs. Pakistan could only manage 146 runs by the end of their 20 overs, and lost nine wickets. Barring a 46-run stand by opener Mohammad Hafeez, the batting performances
by Pakistan were unremarkable.
“With the ball, our death bowling is an area we haven't [previously] done as well as we would have liked, but today it was outstanding,” said Taylor. “We took one side of the field out of play and the bowlers
executed their plans.”
Pakistan’s head coach Waqar Younis accepted that his team was thoroughly outplayed by the hosts, but had few answers for his team’s dismal show.
"They batted better than us, they bowled better than us and they definitely fielded better than us," he said. "We played poor cricket, and when it came to bowling we were well below par. We didn't hit our lengths
right and were missing out in terms of variation. Full credit to http://www.senore.com/Cricket/New-Zealand-c754, they kept coming at us."
"We were meant to bowl slow deliveries which we didn't really do, and Twenty20 is about hitting the yorker at the right time, and we didn't really do that. Umar Gul and Shoaib Akhtar were all over the place.”
With this victory, New Zealand have won the T20 series with a match to spare. If they manage another win at the third and final T20 match at Christchurch on December 30, they will have made a clean sweep of the
series – a complete reversal of fortunes after suffering whitewash defeats in http://www.senore.com/Cricket/India-c750.
Pakistan, who were the T20 World Champions in 2009 and beat http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Australia-c746 2-0 in a two-match series in England this July, have now lost six consecutive T20 matches – a losing streak that began against England in September.
They have failed to cross the 150-run mark in each of these six games.
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