New Zealand v Pakistan, ODI, Basin Reserve, 19 January 2018

Scorecard

Two ODIs at the Basin in 17 years, then two in two weeks. For the final game of their five-match series, New Zealand and Pakistan returned to the scene of the first. This match was originally scheduled for McLean Park, Napier, but moved because of the poor drainage that caused the abandonment of an ODI against Australia last season. With grounds from Whangarei to Queenstown being used for the under-19 World Cup, the Basin it was.

It is an unfortunate time for Napier to lose its status as an international venue. Attractive cricket grounds with good facilities have sprung up all over the country in recent years, making rugby grounds that cricket borrows for the summer—of which McLean Park is one—look somewhat last century.

It has been gratifying to note the admiring attention that New Zealand’s grounds have been receiving on social media. The Basin is the best of the lot when the sun shines as it did once more today (of the international venues, at least; Pukekura Park, New Plymouth is without equal as a domestic venue). There were 4,300 present, not bad for a workday (or as near as Wellington gets to one during January) and enough for the ground to appear well-populated; at the Cake Tin it would have seemed that almost no one was there.

New Zealand won all the first four matches—all with something to spare—following their clean sweep against the West Indies. As I wrote in my post about the first game, whereas in Australia such results would inflate the national ego, here we just assume that the opposition can’t be any good. The hope for this game was that it would help us better assess how good New Zealand actually are.

Kane Williamson won the toss and chose to bat. There aren’t many occasions on which New Zealand have reached 22 without Martin Guptill getting off the mark, but that was the case today. Since Colin Munro became his partner, Guptill has become the health and safety officer of the opening pair, his job to make sure that accidents are not repeated. When he did score, it was in style: a straight six that rattled the TV tower at the southern end.

Munro has become subject to the same double standard of judgement that has been applied to aggressive top order players from Milburn to McCullum. If they thump the ball to the boundary they are heroes; if it goes wrong, they are fools. Here, Munro got to 34 from 24 balls before top edging one to mid off. His timing was not the best, but once more he had got the innings off to a speedy and substantial start.

Williamson was looking comfortable when he flicked a catch to deep mid-wicket as if he had not noticed that Umar Amin was there. It was a casual, shorts-and-jandals sort of shot from a man who normally bats in a dinner jacket.

Guptill and Taylor put on 112 in 24 overs, a stately rate of progress mostly because of 19-year-old legspinner Shadab Khan, who conceded only 35 from his ten overs. Guptill reached his hundred from 125 balls. At this point my mind went back to the World Cup quarter-final two years ago when he scored 92 off the last ten overs of the innings. A total of 300 plus looked likely.

But Guptill holed out to long on from the next ball and from then on, some fine bowling, in particular by Rumman Raees and Faheem Ashraf, kept the final total down to 271. They delivered full length deliveries with precision and intelligence.

Ross Taylor also went just as he would have been expected to start blasting. De Grandhomme made 29 from 21 balls, well short of the destruction setting that is his default at these times. Nobody else lasted long enough to make a difference.

The Pakistan innings was a flame of hope that refused to be extinguished despite regular dousing. At 57 for five after 17 overs it looked all over. Matt Henry was mostly responsible. Brought in for the resting Trent Boult, he had three for nine at one point, his focused pace being too much for the Pakistan top order. Babar Azam, freshly named in the ICC’s one-day World XI, was out cheaply for the fifth time in the series. Haris Sohail and Shadab Khan maintained Pakistan’s interest in the match with a sixth-wicket stand of 105. This was the sort of intelligent retrenchment that there can be time for in 50-over cricket, but not in T20. But the departure of both left Pakistan needing 100 from the last ten with only three wickets remaining. Quite a number of people packed their bags and shuffled off at this point. When will they learn? They missed some of the most interesting cricket of the series.

Faheem Ashraf and Aamir Yamin began to find the boundary, with three sixes in their 31-run partnership in under four overs. Mohammad Nawaz took 16 from the next over, using Ferguson’s pace against him. The luck was with Pakistan, with the edge as effective as the middle of the bat, but it was no more than their refusal to submit to the odds deserved. The WASP predictor still had Pakistan’s chances of winning at 3%, but the sense in the ground was that they had the momentum. It felt closer.

Ferguson’s speed had its way in his next over by bowling Mohammad Nawaz. This left 37 needed from 23 balls and one wicket to fall, yet still Pakistan’s self-belief appeared unshaken. Three more boundaries were hit or edged before Rumman Raees holed out at mid-wicket to leave New Zealand winners by 15 runs with an over remaining.

I hope that Pakistan doesn’t over-react to the five-nil defeat. Twice in this match they fought back when many teams would have been mentally heading for the plane. There is class in the batting, even if it hid in this series. Shadab Khan has the potential to become world-class, and the attack is also talented.

There is also the issue of dumping cricketers in foreign conditions (one warm-up game before this series) and then being surprised that they take time to adjust. As cricket’s attention span grows ever shorter, tests and ODIs need to be good contests. Inadequate preparation for visiting teams makes this far less likely, and is a threat to the future of these forms. I have no idea what the answer is, though a common agreement that what warm-up games there are should be played on good pitches against decent opposition would be a start.

Today, New Zealand had just five bowlers, Munro—the notional sixth—not being called upon even though it seemed the perfect opportunity to give him a bit of experience. Having only five bowlers will cost New Zealand games—when, not if—particularly if one is a wayward speedster in the form of Lockie Ferguson. Form or fitness will expose the weakness. Unless Grant Elliott becomes five years younger, or Corey Anderson regains fitness (the former is the more likely), keeping Matt Henry in the side at the expense of a batsman (probably Henry Nicholls, who has done well in this series) would be the way to do it, though it makes the tail long.

The New Zealand public must come to terms with the reality that their one-day team is very good. So is England’s. Whoever wins the forthcoming series against England could well finish top-ranked ODI side. Prediction: the pitches will be so slow that their pace will be measured in geological eras.

New Zealand v Pakistan, ODI, Basin Reserve, 6 January 2018

Scorecard

It has been a fine summer so far in Wellington, perhaps the best since I moved here twelve years ago. But as every cricket watcher knows, the best way to end a run of good weather (in England or New Zealand at least) is to bring a major cricket match to town. So it was at the Basin on Saturday. The arrival of Pakistan for the first of five ODIs brought with it a merciless southerly, an icy persecutor of those brave or unwise enough to watch from the top deck of the RA Vance Stand. For only the second time in my experience—and the first in an international fixture—the bails were dispensed with for a time, such was the power of the wind.

For most of my cricket-watching life I have taken the view that it is the lot of the spectator to face whatever conditions prevail, that those who sought refuge from them were fellow travellers unfit to call themselves true cricket watchers. Not anymore. There comes a time when the effects of the passing years must be acknowledged, so I watched the entire game from behind the glass in the Long Room, the first time I have done this. It was remarkably easy to free oneself of the associated guilt. By the interval I was scoffing at those foolish enough to have stayed out, ignoring the fact that this had been my practice since the late sixties.

This was the first of a five-game series. Pakistan put New Zealand in. Martin Guptill and Colin Munro opened. Munro hit 53, 66 and 104 in the recent T20 series against West Indies to become No 1 ranked in the world in that form of the game. He and his bank manager await the IPL auction with some relish. But the most interesting thing about Munro is that he averages 51 in first-class cricket after 74 innings, with a fifty-to-century conversion rate of almost 50%. Could he be New Zealand’s David Warner? There appears to be little clamour for him to be picked in the test team, which is hard to understand. I would like to see him in the team for the tests against England, given that he remains in reasonable form between now and then.

Here, Munro did not allow the more leisurely structure of the game to impede his style. He made 58 from 35 deliveries with shrewd, well-placed shots seasoned with a couple of big sixes before edging Hasan Ali to keeper Sarfraz Ahmed in the 13^th over, the end of a first-wicket partnership of 83.

Guptill straight drove two sixes, in the fourth and 26^th overs, but looked out of nick in between, understandably given that he has had a few weeks out with a dodgy hamstring. However, he seemed easily reconciled to the unusual support role in which he was cast today, first to Munro, then to Kane Williamson, who was at his best. He was straight into run-a-ball rhythm maintained relentlessly to the tune of 115 runs from 117 deliveries. He selects shots with the care and skill of a Michelin starred chef selecting produce at a market. Particularly striking today was his ability to play orthodox cross-bat shots to balls only a fraction short, if at all.

Williamson’s hundred was the first at the Basin by a New Zealander since Bevan Congdon in 1975. Of course, this was only the third ODI played there since the Cake Tin opened in 2000, but it is still a surprising piece of information.

Ross Taylor got the ball of the day from Hasan Ali. It jagged back into him in a way that was unique today, to take the top of off stump. Tom Latham, under pressure for the keeper’s spot from Glenn Phillips of Auckland, chipped straight to mid-wicket for three. This gave Henry Nicholls the space to play a risky, audacious 50 from 43 balls. He and Mohammad Amir banged into each other as they ball watched while Nicholls was completing a run. Both went down, but neither suffered injury and the matter was settled with smiles and handshakes. If it had been Warner and Broad at the SCG there would have been war.

Late blows from Southee and Santner took the score to 315 for seven from 50 overs.

That this was too much for Pakistan was obvious from the first over, during which Azhar Ali and Babar Azam were both leg before to Southee. The former called for a review, which showed a solid hit on leg stump, which meant that no review was available to the latter, given out to a ball that was clearly going over the stumps.

By the sixteenth over the innings had subsided to 54 for five. Opener Fakhar Zaman did well to lead a fightback to the extent that only one more wicket had fallen for the addition of a further 112 runs when the rain came in the 31^st over. Fakhar batted most attractively. A left-hander, he is averaging 50 after ten ODIs having made his debut during the Champions Trophy in England last year and making a century in the final. He comes from the Northwest Frontier and has played for 11 domestic teams in Pakistan, according to his CricInfo profile, including the Pakistan Navy.

The rain deprived Fakhar of a deserved hundred, (he was left unbeaten on 82), but the win was already in New Zealand’s pocket, as the Duckworth-Lewis victory margin of 61 runs suggests.

This followed the recent West Indies tour in which the home team won every completed game. In Australia, the reaction to further victory against another country would be “that proves we’re fantastic”. In New Zealand it is “the West Indies can’t be any good if we beat them so easily, and it looks as if Pakistan aren’t much better”. The truth is between the two. There was a lack of enthusiasm as much as talent among the West Indians, but Pakistan are a decent side as their winning of the Champions Trophy showed. They will be back at the Basin at the end of next week for the final game of the series, which has been moved from Napier as the McLean Park field has come to resemble a giant sponge, so poor is its drainage.