Kiwis take inaugural I-Cup tie

Prem Panicker

Funnily enough, just before this game began a friend was talking about how this tournament should have been a triangular. His argument was, India's Independence - which this tournament celebrates - most closely concerns the sub-continent and, if a fourth team was needed, Bangladesh should have been it, if only to give them a taste of competition with the big boys.

Why bring in New Zealand, just to make up the numbers, he argued.

Well, now we know - a rock solid batting display, a most intriguing bowling performance and some of the most incredible catching seen in recent times powered the Kiwis to a win in the inaugural Independence Cup tie over Pakistan - and in such a convincing fashion that they've already got the bookies giving them a serious chance of making the final if not actually winning it.

You wouldn't think, the way the pitch and outfield looked at start of play, that it was raining in Mohali last evening.

The guys who designed and built this stadium, I'd reckon, have done an outstanding job - there is a gentle slope to the ground, with the pitch being at the highest point, so designed that rain water automatically drains away towards the edges - where they have ensured drainage facilities to carry the rainwater away as it pours in.

Add supersoakers and suchlike state of the art equipment and what you get at the PCA Stadium in Mohali is a cricket ground comparable in terms of facilities with the best in the world.

And it's getting quite hep, too - during the drinks break, the hit number Chappa chappa charka chale from the movie Maachis blared out of the PA system. Not quite the We will, we will rock you that had them baying for blood in the bull ring that's the Wanderers', Jo'burg - but its getting there...

Back to serious matters and, for the inaugural game of the Independence Cup, the ground staff apparently decided to leave a good covering of grass on the wicket - giving it pace and bounce and, most importantly, a nice even-ness.

Rameez Raja, leading Pakistan, was tempted by the grass to bowl first after winning the toss, figuring perhaps that his pacemen could get something out of the conditions. Raja said as much at the post-toss briefing on television, and added that since Pakistan's strength in this tournament lies in its batting, he figured that chasing was a better bet than setting the target.

The teams announced were as follows:

New Zealand: B A Young, N J Astle, M J Horne, C L Cairns, S P Fleming (captain), C Z Harris, D N Patel, A C Parore (wicket keeper), A J Penn and G A Larsen and H T Davis.

Pakistan: Rameez Raja (captain), Saeed Anwar (vice captain), Inzamam ul Haq, Ijaz Ahmed, Salim Malik, Shahid Afridi, Abdul Razzak, Moin Khan, Saqlain Mushtaq, Mohammad Hussain and Aaqib Jaaved.

An interesting sidelight about the Kiwi side is the identity of the keeper. Adam Parore, you will remember, began life as a keeper batsman. And then the New Zealand selectors brought in Lee Germon, as captain in his debut match, and gave him the gloves. Parore, from then on, has been playing as a pure batsman, whenever he did make it to the side. And now Germon is out, and Parore back in - and by my reckoning, that makes Germon the only instance in modern cricket history of a player who has played all his games as captain of his side. Curious, that...

The Kiwis opened with Young and Astle. Judging by Aaqib Jaaved's second over, top class quick bowlers could have done some damage with the new ball in the early part of the innings - there was bounce, there was late movement off the seam and Jaaved, in his first over, beat Nathan Astle's bat with two superb outswingers.

Problem for Pakistan, though, lay in the fact that with Akram and Younis out of the side, they had to rely on the inexperienced Abdul Razzak to open the bowling with Jaaved. Razzak has a nice, easy action and a brisk turn of speed - but playing your first one day international brings its own pressures, and the bowler felt it to the extent of sending down a stream of wides and no balls in his very first over. And he never ever really recovered his nerve after - in fact, he was given a mere 7 overs, and in course of that went for 45 runs for one wicket, having in the process overstepped six times and bowled 5 wides as well.

With the bowling so lax at one end, Jaaved too lost the edge of his attack - and the Kiwi openers made merry, hitting through the line, relying on the even bounce to go through with their shots and milking the field restrictions in the first 15 overs to such good effect that when the 15 overs were up, New Zealand was on a healthy 100 without loss.

Nathan Astle, who in February 1996 became the scorer of the first century registered in the 1996 Wills World Cup, seems to love Indian wickets - he batted like he was in a dream, today, and Young merely had to work the singles and let his partner do the hard work. The first real chance for Pakistan came

Pakistan compounded its own problems with some rather surprising field placements - the most noticeable being the deputing of Inzamam ul Haq to patrol the square boundary on the off. Easily among the slowest movers in international cricket today, Inzy kept sauntering around the point boundary, letting batsmen run two where there was just one and, often, not getting there fast enough to cut off the fours. A statistic said it all - of the first 150 runs on the board, 58 came in the point region.

Razzak got a measure of consolation when, coming back for his second spell, he produced one of his rare good balls - a superb yorker, swinging in late and pitching right in the blockhole, to make a meal of Young's stumps, to have the Kiwis end over number 25 on a very strong 155/1. Young played the kind of innings to be expected of the junior partner in a long partnership - working the singles around, letting the in form Astle have the bulk of the bowling and whenever the occasion presented, throwing everything including the kitchen sink at the ball.

Number three, Mathew Horne, picked up where YOung had left off and watched Astle go to his fourth ODI century - a superbly paced knock which ended when, in the 41st over, the opener decided to really step on the accelerator, came dancing down to Shahid Afridi and was comfortably stumped for 117 made off 132 balls with nine fours and two smashing sixes.

With the scoreboard reading 226/1 in 40 overs, it did look as though a score of 300+ was a cert. Thanks to some lovely slog over bowling by Saqlain Mushtaq and Aaqib Jaaved, though, Pak clawed back into the game with a string of wickets that effectively put the brakes on the Kiwi charge.

Saqlain started the slide with a faster one that spun back just enough to beat Horne's attempt to lay back and cut, Horne bowled Saqlain for 45 off 57 with just 3 fours - a testimony to the capable way he rotated the strike in favour of the marauding Astle.

Stephen Fleming looked in good touch, playing a superb flick for four in his brief innings of 9 off 9, before trying a too ambitious drive at a floater from Saqlain to give the bowler a return catch off the leading edge. That wicket fell at 256 and, just 8 runs later, Chris Cairns - always a danger in the slog overs - played all over a yorker from Aaqib Jaaved to have the Kiwis 264/5, Cairns scoring 17 off 22 without, however, producing even one of those huge hits to and over the fence that he is famed for.

Credit for that goes to Saqlain and Aaqib - their length and line at the death was immaculate, Saqlain in particular extracting turn and bounce from the wicket and keeping the batsmen guessing with his teasing flight. In every successive outing, this youngster does enough to underline his rep as the best off spinner in contemporary cricket.

With the innings, at that stage, into the last three overs - two of which were bowled by Saqlain himself - the usual end of innings panic set in, and first, Harris lashed at one from Saqlain and managed only to drag it back onto the stumps and immediately after, Dipak Patel - who, by contemporary standards, rates as a granddaddy at age 39 - was run out attempting a single to keeper Moin Khan.

Adam Parore - another enigma in Kiwi cricket, having not long ago been considered good enough to bat at number three, now coming in at number 8, made a brisk 16 off 12 with one huge hit off Aaqib over the ropes, and the Kiwis at the end of their quota of overs had got to 285/7. A very good score indeed - but a good 20 runs or more short of what they seemed liable to make going into the last ten overs.

For Pakistan, the most impressive bowling came from Saqlain Mushtaq who, with little help from his fielders (Astle and Young, in fact, took an all run four at one point) still had the impressive figures of 10-0-38-3. Javed bowled very well at the death, but his middle overs were not up to his usual standard, and he ended up with 70 runs against his name for just one wicket, off 8 overs. Afridi completed his spell, giving away 49 for one wicket, and though debutant left arm spinner Mohammad Hussain (5-0-36-0), like newbie medium pacer Razzak (7-0-45-1), had a hard time of it, Salim Malik compensated by bowling 10 overs of intelligent up and down stuff for a personal cost of 45 runs.

And those figures make you think - as, I suspect, one is apt to many more times before the end of this tournament - of absent friends Akram, Younis and Mushtaq Mohammad.

You could line up the six best batsmen in the world - and you still can't guarantee a successful chase when the ask is above 5.5 runs an over from the first ball.

More so when you are up against one of the finest fielding sides in the world - a lineup so dedicated that in the blistering heat of May's midday sun, they actually had a three hour fielding practise session before the game kicked off.

Trouble is that no matter how many strokes you play, you are always battling with the realisation that you have to keep that up for not one, not ten, but 50 straight overs - and that's crippling pressure right there. And when each run has to be clawed from the clutches of fielders who seem to think that a ball going past them is a mortal insult, then the odds get a bit too hot for comfort.

Pakistan was to find this out the hard way. Opening with Saeed Anwar and Shahid Afridi, they rocketed off to a blazing start, Anwar in particular showing no sign of the illnesses that had kept him out of recent tours. But just when it looked like he might produce another of his huge match winning knocks, Penn - who, along with Davis, made for a very weak opening attack - bowled one in the slot outside off, Anwar lashed his trademark coverdrive and stood there, bemused, as Chris Harris at a widish point took off like Superman on speed, clutching the ball while at full stretch a good five feet in the air and to his left, and made the whole process look ridiculously easy. Anwar's 17 runs had come in 29 balls, and Pakistan were 45/1 at that stage.

Skipper Rameez Raja was slated to open, but the huge target obviously made him decide in favour of Afridi's big hitting talents. Afridi duly blazed away, and Pakistan at 64/1 in 10 overs seemed to be well poised for the chase. Afridi accelerated even further in the 11th over, bowled by Penn, a huge six to mid on, a four over extra cover, two more off a lashed square drive that had Dipak Patel, normally a safe fielder, putting it down after doing very well to get his hands to it, and then yet another four to square leg having the crowd on its feet.

But ironically, it was Afridi who caused the setback when, after Raja had pushed one to mid on and called for an easy single, Afridi hesitated and then sent his skipper back. Bad move - the call was obviously the batsman's, and Nathan Astle had all the time in the world to relay the ball back to Parore who took the bails off. Raja gone for 11/21, Pakistan 92/2.

Ijaz Ahmed brings with him an air of calm assurance, his forte being an ability to place the ball and make the scoreboard glide effortlessly on, without ever seeming to be in any kind of tearing hurry. At the other end, Afridi kept blazing away - till an attempted inside out drive off Gavin Larsen missed completely, and Afridi found his stumps pegged back for 56 off 49 with four fours and two sixes, Pakistan 106/3.

In fact, the introduction of bits and pieces bowlers Chris Harris and Gavin Larsen, in the 15th and 16th overs, was probably the turning point of the match. Till then, Pakistan had been getting runs at will. Suddenly, Harris comes up with a high quality maiden in the 16th over, Larsen emulates him by bowling a controlled line, bang on the stumps, and Afridi, aware that the dot balls were mounting up, took that one risk too many.

Off the very next ball, Salim Malik thick-edged one towards mid off where Penn, running in and diving full stretch forward, picked up a blinder - only for umpire K T Francis, ideally placed to see what was going on, to turn the appeal down. Rather a bad miss by the umpire, that - and Malik, in tandem with Raja, promptly took advantage of the life, playing the role of senior pros, working the ball around, guiding the score along with no fuss and ensuring that the ask rate never crossed the danger-mark of 6 or more an over.

110/3 in 20. 135/3 in 25. 162/3 in 30. 185/3 in 35. Milestones, in what looked to be an immaculately planned chase - till, that is, Ijaz tried flicking across the line to a full pitch from Nathan Astle, and got the ball bang on his boot in front of the wicket, Pakistan 189/4 and Ijaz himself gone for 50 off 72 with four fours.

That brought Inzamam ul Haq to the crease, and a huge hoik off his very first ball, which the lanky Chris Cairns just failed to hold on to on the line at mid on, signalled the burly batsman's intentions. In the 1992 World Cup semifinal between these two sides, it was Inzamam whose belligerence saved the day for Pakistan. In fact, that was the innings that really heralded the arrival of Inzy. Here, he seemed set for an encore and at the other end, Malik cruised along with his trademark glides and smooth drives.

But the pressure continued to mount, as the irregular bowlers, by the expedient of bowling a very straight line on the stumps and keeping the ball full up, made run getting difficult. Malik tried to retrieve the situation by stepping back and blasting one through point. Everyone looked to the boundary - while Chris Harris, meanwhile, flung himself to his right, this time, and took another beauty just when Malik looked set to take the game away. Pakistan 221/5, Malik gone for 47 off 61.

That brought Moin Khan to the wicket - and Pakistan, with two of its most dangerous batsmen together going into the 42nd over, still looked healthy. Till, that is, Inzamam stood rooted to the ground and took a huge swipe without ever getting in line. The ball went high enough in the air to be at risk of oxygen deprivation - with Harris, calm as ever, circling around under it. And holding on to what - though Harris didn't make it seem so - was a very hard catch to judge. Pakistan 232/6, Inzamam gone for 30 off 32 with two fours and a six, and despite the presence of Moin Khan, the game was for all purposes over. Pakistan at that point needed 54 runs off 34 deliveries, with just the tail to partner Moin.

Saqlain Mushtaq has of late blossomed into a very good batsman in the lower order, so it was kind of puzzling when Rameez sent out first Mohammad Hussain (who, after scoring just one, hoiked Larsen to midwicket and saw the big burly Davis tumble forward to pull off yet another beauty), and Abdul Razzak (lured down the wicket and stumped by Parore off Astle for 8/7).

In between Hussain and Razzak, Moin Khan lost it - or rather, the credit should go to the Kiwi skipper. Moin went over the top, a four looked a foregone conclusion, but Campbell reached overhead and plucked the ball down with no apparent effort - and, in dismissing the dangerous Pak keeper for 16 off 16, sealed the game for his side.

Saqlain and Aaquib Jaaved took Pakistan to 263 for 9 at the end of their fifty overs, but despite a final hurrah by Jaaved who spanked the penultimate ball of the innings from Astle for six to wide long on, the score was still 22 short of the target, giving the Kiwis a comprehensive win.

What was most interesting about their bowling was that while their two opening bowlers went for runs and never got to complete their overs, Dipak Patel in tandem with the bits and pieces guys Harris, Larsen and Astle did all the damage with a tight line, backed by superb fielding. Astle, with his century and an analysis of 4/44 in eight overs, was a dead cert for man of the match - but to my mind, the real difference between the two sides lay in the fielding.

And it is this that could well make them the side to beat in this tournament...

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