My Favorite cricket match **Vol. 3 **

Third in my list of my Favorite cricket match is another, New Zealand and Pakistan match, played in McLean Park, Napier, New Zealand on 14^th Jan, 2004.

Pakistan have their backs towards wall as they are trailing in the series 1-2, Pakistan needs to win this game to remain alive in the series so that the 5^th one day international will be a final. New Zealand again won the toss and decided to bowl and put Pakistan to bat first as they wanted to take the advantage of fresh pitch and wants their bowlers to take quick wickets as it will assist more in the morning.

Pakistan 11 looks like this : Shoaib Akhtar, Mohammad Sami, Shoaib Malik, Mohammad Yousuf,Inzamam-ul-Haq (c), Abdul Razzaq, Yasir Hameed, Imran Farhat, Azhar Mahmood, Moin Khan (wk), Saleem Elahi

And New Zealand 11 looks like: Stephen Fleming (c), Chris Cairns, Hamish Marshall, Craig McMillan, Scott Styris, Jacob Oram, Brendon McCullum (wk), Kyle Mills, Daryl Tuffey, Daniel Vettori, Craig Cumming

Decision of bowling first was great as Pakistan started very badly and keep losing wickets in a hurry and which resulted in Pakistan getting bowled out for 126 runs and only played 36.3 over’s with higest score made by the pace bowler from Rawal pindi Shoaib Akhtar, he made 27 runs in 28 balls with 3 fours and only extra’s have the second highest score of 20.

New Zealand batted very well and with the help of Craig cumming and Chris Cairns , they got the total in just 22.5 over’s and won the game completely with 163 balls still remaining in the game. Jacob oram was adjudged Man of the match for his 2 wickets by only conceding 24 runs in his 10 overs and he was the one who bowled superbly. So with this win, New Zealand has already won the series 3-1 with one more game to play, which will be like dead rubber as it wouldn’t impact the status of series.