McCullum leads Black Caps to series win, with a little help from the rain
Posted by Hamish McBrearty on February 23rd, 2008
The Black Caps have won their five match series against England by three games to one after a 34 run win in a rain shortened game in Christchurch on Saturday night. Wicketkeeper Brendan McCullum got New Zealand off to a flying start, and they never looked back, until the rain came.
New Zealand captain Daniel Vettori won the toss and put England in to bat on a hard and flat pitch which looked full of runs. After losing Phil Mustard in the third over, the tourists initially struggled for runs against the Black Caps’ opening bowlers, but eventually Andrew Cook and Ian Bell righted the ship and set their side up for a big score.
England looked to be cruising at 105/2 after 25 overs, but New Zealand’s slower bowlers Vettori, Scott Styris and Jeetan Patel tied the batsmen up and made scoring very difficult through the middle stages of the innings, restricting England to just 24 runs between the 30th and 40th overs. Some huge hitting from Dmitri Mascarenhas in the final overs saw the English through to a respectable 242/7, although given their earlier position it seemed around 30 runs light.
The Black Caps got off to a blazing start, taking 96 runs from the first 10 overs as McCullum dispatched the English attack to all corners of the ground. James Anderson was his favourite victim, being hit for three sixes in a row at one stage, the last of which was well caught in the corporate hospitality area on the second floor of the stand!
The loss of McCullum and his opening partner, Jessie Ryder, slowed the run rate somewhat, but after the flying start Ross Taylor and Scott Styris needed just under four runs an over. They kept the scoreboard ticking over, with Taylor in particular punishing any bad ball served up to him.
The game seemed to be meandering to an inevitable Black Caps win until Styris spooned the simplest of catches to Stuart Broad at mid-off and then Ryan Sidebottom dismissed debutant Daniel Flynn and Jacob Oram with consecutive deliveries. The momentum was well and truly with England, who had New Zealand’s last pair of recognised batsmen at the crease, when the rain came.
As soon as the players left the field there was a mass exodus of fans from the stadium, most realising a return to the field was unlikely and the home side was well ahead of their Duckworth-Lewis target. As it turned out, they were right and the Black Caps celebrated their series win in an almost empty stadium.
The teams now put away the white ball and coloured uniforms as they prepare for the two test series which begins on March 5 in Hamilton.
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The McCullum leads Black Caps to series win, with a little help from the rain by Hamish McBrearty, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
