Thursday, 26 October 2006

Ben on...a win as wins should be won

In last night's victory over Pakistan, the Black Caps finally put together a pretty much ideal game:

An opener got a start and provided momentum at the top of the order (Fleming's 80) and a middle-order batsman provided the innings with a backbone (Styris' 86) and stability for the lower order to hit out (Oram 31 off 26, McCullum 27 off 13). Then Bond breaks the opening partnership (22-1), the other bowlers chip away (45-2, 65-3, 83-4), Bond breaks the dangerous mid-innings partnership (177-4) and a fine piece of fielding all but wraps the game up ("substitute Ross Taylor pulls off a blinding pick-up-and-throw from gully to ping the non-striker's stumps").

There were three standout perfomances, Fleming, Styris and Bond (3-45), but ultimately it was just an excellent team performance.

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