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1st Test Review : Pakistan beat New Zealand by 248 runs

DW44

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1st Test Review : Pakistan beat New Zealand by 248 runs

It seems Pakistan can do no wrong these days, as they wrap up their third successive Test win and, much like the previous two, this one was massive. Over the course of five days, Pakistan had utterly and completely dominated the match, right from the first ball of the game to the last one.

Hot off the heels of their 2-0 series win against Australia, Pakistan carried forward the momentum gained from that series into this one, which began less than a week after the last one ended. Winning the toss once again and batting first, Pakistan piled up 269-2 on day 1, thanks largely to an Ahmad Shehzad century and 96 by Mohammad Hafeez as they put up Pakistan’s highest opening partnership against New Zealand in Test cricket.

Day 2 proceeded in a similar manner, with Pakistan continuing where they left off as Younis Khan and Misbah ul Haq scored centuries of their own to take Pakistan to 566-3 declared, their fifth successive innings where they declared. Both Younis and Misbah continued their good form from the previous series, against Australia, where they had scored three and two centuries respectively in four and three innings. In all the hubbub surrounding the three centuries, Azhar Ali’s 87 were largely overlooked.

Between Shehzad’s century and the two from the old guard, Shehzad was injured as he was struck on the head by a Corey Anderson bouncer he was trying to pull, causing him a minor fracture of the skull and taking him out of action for the remainder of the series.

New Zealand’s first innings could not have gone more differently from Pakistan’s. Tom Latham scored a century but the rest of the batting lineup offered little resistance against Rahat Ali and Zulfiqar Babar as they were bundled out 304 runs short of Pakistan’s total. No batsman apart from Latham passed 50. Rahat Ali, in what has been the finest spell of his short career, picked up four wickets for a miserly 22 runs in 17 overs as he moved both the old and new ball around prodigiously.

Choosing not to enforce the follow on, Pakistan went in to bat late on day 3. With Ahmad Shehzad absent on account of his head injury, Mohammad Hafeez was accompanied to the crease by Azhar Ali who had played the role of makeshift opener, against Australia, only recently in Dubai when Hafeez himself was injured. The two did played their part to perfection as they put up a quick 69 run opening stand before Ish Sodhi had his first taste of success in the match at his expense. Younis Khan, the man who has not put a foot wrong since three low scoring innings against Sri Lanka in August, scored less than 30 for the first time in six innings as he too fell victim to Sodhi.

Mohammad Hafeez, who had missed out on three figures by just four runs in the first innings, made amends for that as he drove and cut his way to a 130 ball hundred, his first in over two years. Pakistan declared their second innings for 175, the sixth lowest score in Pakistan’s cricketing history at which they have declared.

Faced with a monumental target of 480, New Zealand decided that a good offense was the best defense as they went for their strokes from the first ball, but like all good things it came to an end as Pakistan’s bowlers triggered another collapse that saw New Zealand lose eight wickets for 117 runs. The honors were shared equally between Pakistan’s bowlers as Rahat Ali, Yasir Shah and Zulfiqar Babar picked up two wickets apiece, all three taking their two wickets in quick succession.

New Zealand were two wickets away from a certain and massive defeat near the end of day four but Pakistan’s decision not to take an extra 30 minutes to try and dislodge the last two wickets meant that the game would have a fifth day after all.

Day 5 was going to be a special one for Pakistan and for the skipper Misbah-ul-Haq where a win would take him to the top of the table as the most successful Pakistani Test captain in terms of Tests won, ahead of Javed Miandad and Imran Khan.

It didn't take long for Yasir Shah to remove Craig as New Zealand were nine down. It was the last pair which frustrated Pakistan with a 54 run partnership as Ish Sodi made 63 before he was finally removed by Imran Khan. Pakistan completed a comprehensive 248 run win and as a result took a 1-0 lead in the 3 match series. Rahat Ali was acknowledged for his superb bowling as he won the Man of the Match award with match figures of 6-70.

The second Test Match starts on the 17th of November 2014 in Dubai.
 
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Dominant victory. Great to See Pakistan playing so consistently and disciplined.

NZ should improve in the next match but thats not saying much because they couldn't get a lot worse.
 
Dominant victory. Great to See Pakistan playing so consistently and disciplined.

NZ should improve in the next match but thats not saying much because they couldn't get a lot worse.
Idk about that, we could still get rolled for under 100.

I would really consider playing Ronchi over Taylor, he looks so underdone.
 
I think you should consider the possibility of early onset dementia with that statement.
Taylor has looked like a sitting duck out there. So badly out of touch, at least Ronchi has played a lot of cricket of late, he's bound to score 20 or so, which atm looks like 10-20 runs more than Rosco looks like scoring.
 
Taylor has looked like a sitting duck out there. So badly out of touch, at least Ronchi has played a lot of cricket of late, he's bound to score 20 or so, which atm looks like 10-20 runs more than Rosco looks like scoring.
I think this thrashing has shook you hard, Ronchi is a t20 and Odi circus player, not for the hardest format, if you have any other test alternatives on the squad you can play them instead of Taylor but ronchi lol
 
I think this thrashing has shook you hard, Ronchi is a t20 and Odi circus player, not for the hardest format, if you have any other test alternatives on the squad you can play them instead of Taylor but ronchi lol
It's either him or one hit wonder Rutherford. Showing Ronchi some love because of his form against SA.
 
Meh it's still more quality cricket than Taylor's played of late.

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What a great win and a true traditional thrashing.

A word of caution on he next test though. I would really like to see how we handle things if the kiwis win the toss!! Personally I think we'll still win but conditions first up are the best!
 
Good Work by Pk . Morale booster. Would 3-0 in series have any impact on Pakistani ranking in Test ?
 
I hope we work hard and dont get overconfident. If our team act half the way our fans are acting now we will be doomed in 2nd test.

Good win for Pakistan and this should continue we are not done yet.
 
I will only relax if we win second test, still don't believe we will be consistent with bat for 5 tests in a row if we are to have one of our traditional crap innings I hope it can wait till third test.
 
We have played splendidly well over the past few weeks so credit to the boys for that. The acid test will be when this team plays in conditions not suitable to them.
 
Idk about that, we could still get rolled for under 100.

I would really consider playing Ronchi over Taylor, he looks so underdone.

Ronchi over Taylor... Dripping sarcasm ...


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/sport/pakistan-now-you-see-them-now-you-dont-20141114-11n0u9.html

Pakistan: now you see them, now you don't
Date
November 14, 2014

Greg Baum

I'd like to think that what Pakistan cricket coach Waqar Younis is watching on his laptop as his team plays is Game of Thrones, or at least the antics of cats on YouTube. I'd like to think that he looks up every now and then and sees a bank of opposition coaches in a huddle a little further along in the empty stadium, scratching their heads as they puzzle over freeze-frames of a no-name leg-spinner who was plucking out their batsmen as precisely as if by electrolysis. And smirks.

How else to rationalise the way the earth has moved in the last few weeks in the United Arab Emirates, except to imagine that what this Pakistan team have done is to smuggle cricket out of its modern reductionist confines and away again to a realm where it exists as and for what it is: a sport, living magic, its secrets unknowable even to the magicians. They have done the world the favour of re-mystifying sport.

More, they have turned the process on itself. Australia did do their homework on the leg-spinner from up the Khyber who had toiled away anonymously in the Pakistan system – for want of a better word – for 13 years before getting a Test cap. They paid an Indian consultancy to deconstruct him, and still he took 12 killing wickets in two matches against the Australians, and four more against the Kiwis, and his mate, a 35-year-old rookie left-arm tweaker, took 19 wickets in those three matches, and it didn't matter a whit that Australia had brought in Muthiah Muralidaran to school them in dealing with the brown arts. The Pakistanis have deconstructed deconstructionism.

It confounds reason that Pakistan field a team at all. Since 2009, they have been a team in exile, cricketing vagabonds, the Flying Dutchman of sport. Aggravating their disadvantage, players were lost variously to match-fixing convictions, internal politics and – on the eve of the Australia series – a suddenly conscientious ICC crackdown on angulated bowling actions. Instead of ticking every box, Pakistan had crossed them all.

Instability was and is the order of the Pakistani day. Misbah-ul-Haq is the captain now sweeping the board (orthodox and reverse), but was said by one close observer to have kept his job only because "all his detractors hate each other more than than they hate him". Misbah is a classic of Pakistanism. For 20 years, he was a tic in cricket's consciousness. Now 40, he lost 10 kilograms at a training camp in June, dismaying his provincial coach at Sui Northern Gas, Basit Ali. "I told Misbah that at the age of 40, he shouldn't have lost so much weight, and that it would affect him at the crease," he said.

Misbah dismissed the idea, but packed seven kilograms back on anyway, and made a century against Australia, and another in the same match, a 56-ball blitz equalling Viv Richards' fastest-ever, and everyone from 1-7 in the order made centuries, several times over, and the rest didn't even have to bat, which left them plenty of focus and energy to bowl out Australia and New Zealand, and suddenly, Misbah was captain of the hottest cricket team in the world. And everyone else threw away their clipboards.

But Pakistan always has been to cricket as it is geo-politics, the world's wild child, the exception to every rule. "A place to send your mother-in-law," Ian Botham once sneered (subsequently, an English newspaper DID send Botham's mother-in-law to Pakistan, and she loved it!). Pakistan's system always looks ad hoc, its "pathway" a matter of plucking unknowns from the nets, Imran Khan-style. Allah only knows how many have been missed this way; Steve Waugh once emerged from a practice hit in Lahore wondering why the leg-spinner in his net was not in the Test team.

"Put simply, Pakistan cricket is chaos in flux," wrote Wisden India recently. But this inscrutable Pakistan specialises in brilliant cricketers and mercurial cricket, also rampant skullduggery. In 1992, Pakistan, internally riven, practising minimally and often teetering on the verge of elimination, won the World Cup, beating England in the final.

Australia's 1994 tour was Pakistan in excelsis. Pakistan trailed by big margins in every Test, but made 56 for the last wicket to win one, and with it the series. It was the last time Pakistan beat Australia in a series until this month. It was also the series in which match-fixing first broke.

In banishment, Pakistan have become nearly invisible. Admirably, they have maintained a break-even record. Early in 2012, they swept England, then No. 1 in the world, 3-0. But they had not won a series since until now. Pleasantly surprised devotees still can only see the crash coming. "Because it will, right?" says journalist Osman Samiuddin fatalistically. "It has to, because it always does. Some way will be found to lose some more players, wipe out the board or fall head-first into some off-field controversy."

Either way, crash or crescendo, it will be fathomable only as Pakistan itself is. Once, I ran into Waqar in a five-star hotel in Lahore, on his way to the whirl of a wedding pageant in the courtyard. Our conversation went well until I felt a scratching on my leg, and looked down, and saw (on a chain) a bear.
 
Been on holiday in thailand for two weeks so not really had chance to see Pakistan beat Aussies in 2nd test of 1st test here against Kiwis, but sounds like the batsmen are finally finding a ruthless streak to score runs and whilst our bowling is still learning as a group they are doing a job as a unit, long may this continue for rest of this series.
 
Rahat and Hafeez were really enjoying to watch. Hafeez really puts life to this Pak test team. He should be there now that he has scored 200 runs in a single test.
 
I fear a bigger test coming up for Pakistan
 
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