In the first ODI, Pakistan’s batting crumbled like only it can. On their bad days, there is a dull sense of déjà-vu as the batsmen succumb meekly to their technical frailties. What excites the fan are Pakistan’s good days: then you gasp at the audacious shot making of a Umar Akmal, Shahid Afridi or Abdul Razzaq, or at the fluency of Younis Khan, or the nudge-dab-slog-sweep routine of Misbah-ul-Haq. If the bowlers are on song too, they look a dangerous outfit.
So far it’s been a quintessentially Pakistani start to the series: announce a World Cup team without naming the captain and idly watch cliques develop within the team; have the batting implode in the first game; then explode, briefly as rain ruined in the second game when the conditions were supposed to be loaded against the batsmen, and leave the rest of the world wondering what will happen in the third.
While Pakistan sink-and-awe, New Zealand occupy an ecosystem where discipline and self-surrender seem to co-exist without contradiction. One day, they look like a highly disciplined unit, whose whole seems greater than the sum of its parts, but on another day their frailties seem too weak to hide and they just surrender. The new coach, John Wright, has made some changes: Brendon McCullum bats lower down to strengthen the middle order, Martin Guptill opens with the licence to hunt runs together with Jesse Ryder, and Daniel Vettori drops further down. The news is that Jamie How will open in the next game as New Zealand continue to experiment before the World Cup.
