"Top End" ends

The New Zealand ‘A’ tour of Northern Australia ended last night with a victory over Pakistan ‘A’. In a solid, but unspectacular, batting performance New Zealand ‘A’ scored 222 and then bowled out Pakistan ‘A’ for 172. Jamie How top scored with 48 while Warren McSkimming and Matthew Orchard both took cheap braces.

The “Top End” series has been a pretty good experiment. A group of second-string New Zealanders got to try their hand against good opposition in quite testing conditions. And most came through pretty well. All of the top order batsmen - Jesse Ryder Jamie How, Peter Fulton, Matthew Sinclair, Craig McMillan, Michael Papps, Shannen Stewart, Rob Nicol and Ross Taylor – did well and all put good scores on the board. And while the bowling attack was generally solid rather than spectacular – apart from a fiery 5 wicket burst from Mark Gillespie against India ‘A’ – it did its job well enough.

The tour ended with the side having recorded a 100% success rate in 50-over matches, notching victories against Australia ‘A’, India ‘A’, Pakistan ‘A’, Queensland and Northern Territory (twice). In the only first-class match of the tour it lost by three wickets to India ‘A’ and it also lost both the Twenty20 matches it played.