Bridgetown (Barbados), May 7: New Zealand captain Daniel Vettori is drawing strength from their last year’s Champions Trophy experience as they strive to bounce back into contention in their Super Eights match against Pakistan at the World Twenty20 Championships here on Saturday.
The Black Caps went down by 13 runs to South Africa on Thursday and they now need to win their remaining Super Eights matches against Pakistan and later England on Monday to advance to the semifinals.
In Champions Trophy last year, the Kiwis were staring down the barrel after losing their opening group match — also to South Africa — but came back with wins over Sri Lanka and England before overcoming Pakistan in the semifinals.
“I hope that sits well with us,” Vettori was quoted as saying in the New Zealand Herald.
“We did it at the Champions Trophy, we had to win games on end. This is the same. It’s opposition we’ve played a lot lately and we’re pretty familiar with so we’ve got some confidence but they’re going to be big games.”
Here to defend their crown with a new-look team after some prominent names were banned for indiscipline, Pakistan have lived up to their reputation of being consistently inconsistent.
Pakistan’s batting has not been too impressive barring Salman Butt and to some extent Umar Akmal. Skipper Shahid Afridi has not quite lived up to his nickname of ‘Boom Boom Afridi’ as yet, while the experienced Misbah-ul Haq has continued his barren run with the bat.
The New Zealand bowlers were given a mauling by Albie Morkel, who slammed 40 off 18 balls including five sixes, and supported by an unbeaten 47 from AB de Villiers. Vettori was happy with the bowling through the middle stages but said the game effectively swung in the last five overs, when they conceded 62.
Kiwis Pak look for turnaround
source page www.deccanchronicle.com/sports
0 comments:
Post a Comment