New Zealand vs England 1 Post Game Wrap
Posted by Hamish McBrearty on January 16th, 2007
England won by 3 wickets with 1 ball remaining. They made hard work of that. England’s batsmen appeared to be half asleep as they chased New Zealand’s modest total of 205. Andrew Flintoff was named man of the match after scoring an unbeaten 72 off 75 balls.
Michael Vaughan’s injury during fielding troubled him enough to call for a runner during his innings. Although it appeared Vaughan was claiming a hamstring injury, it is fairly likely that once again he has injured his knee. If Vaughan has injured himself once again it make England’s batting woes even worse. Already without Kevin Pietersen, England can ill afford to lose another batsman, especially with their top order in its current form.
Throughout the middle overs England’s batsmen struggled to keep the score ticking along, scoring only 27 runs between overs 20 and 30. This was a combination of poor batting, accurate bowling and athletic fielding. In fact New Zealand’s fielding performance was excellent for most of the match, even with their best fielder Hamish Marshall carrying the drinks.
New Zealand’s bowling and fielding fell apart at the death with run outs missed and too many no-balls bowled. New Zealand had Flintoff caught at mid-wicket, but the delivery was ruled a no ball as it was a full toss above waist height. Mark Gillespie also squandered a chance for to run out Paul Nixon in the dying stages of the game.
In the end New Zealand simply didn’t have enough runs to defend. While the winning runs were hit of the penultimate ball, a further 20 runs would probably have been enough to win the game for the Black Caps.
This result leave Australia at the top of the table at 2-0, England at 1-1 and New Zealand at 0-2. The next match is in Brisbane between Australia and England this Friday. Brisbane is a traditionally hard and fast pitch which will suit the Australian fast bowlers.
As for me, I’ll be back tomorrow with some thoughts on the series so far.
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The New Zealand vs England 1 Post Game Wrap by Hamish McBrearty, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
