Cricket: T20 win timed to lift NZ spirits

Tim Southee celebrates his hat-trick. Photo / Brett Phibbs.

Southee celebrates hat-trick in five-wicket haul.

It was a win, not a perfect performance by any stretch, but right now New Zealand will settle for a W just about any which way.

They did well in beating Pakistan by five wickets at Eden Park yesterday in the first of this week's three T20s.

It's worth remembering that their haunting run of 11 straight defeats were all in the 50-over format. New Zealand usually play the shortest form pretty competitively.

"We don't want to get too carried away, but it's a good start to the series," captain Ross Taylor said last night. "We haven't played as well as we'd have liked, but I'm sure the win will get a bit of confidence into the team and hopefully we can continue with that."

It was a chance to banish grim memories of their subcontinental woes which forced a serious upheaval in the off-field ranks in the last week. Back on home turf, in conditions they know, they looked happier, too.

The win was achieved on the back of three key factors: Tim Southee's five wickets in just seven balls, including the third T20 hat-trick, which chomped through Pakistan's middle order, after they'd been sent in; Martin Guptill's clean hitting in his maiden T20 half-century off only 23 balls; and Taylor making sure there would be no late alarms in seeing the job through with a brisk unbeaten 39.

There were 2.5 overs unbowled in New Zealand's chase for 144. In this shortest form of the game, that's a bath and it would have been more so had it not been for some late hitting by bowlers Wahab Riaz and Umar Gul.

Thirty-one came from the last two overs. Without that, Pakistan would have been in sorry shape.

This was the first game on the reconfigured Eden Park. It showed that you can move the pitch block to any direction you like - it's now running north-south - but you will still have comic-book boundaries somewhere.

So there were snicks that flew for six, so too leading edges, and Scott Styris got off the mark with a flat cut which cleared the rope.

One Pakistan batsman slammed a ball to long on and barely beat home the throw to the bowler's end for a quick single.

It's a joke, and having longer boundaries through the mid-wicket and extra cover regions is only part-compensation.

The trick is to learn to use those angles. There were 16 sixes in the game - for which 16,375 people full of Christmas cheer turned up - although several flew to the longer boundaries. Guptill, with four of them, was especially impressive, the sweet spot on his bat proving a magnet for the ball.

Pakistan were in decent shape at 58 for one coming to the end of their sixth over before Southee turned the innings on its head.

He was helped with some ordinary shots and got his hat-trick when Umar Akmal smashed the ball into his pads but was given lbw.

Still, Southee bowled well, with spirit, and got terrific reward.

Adam Milne's first international, at age 18, was testing, 46 runs coming from four overs, but he'll be better for the experience. He got the ball through consistently above the 140km/h mark, and encouragingly beat the the odd stroke.

Guptill tucked in from the start, 15 coming off the first over - and dispatching Shoaib Akhtar high on to the second tier of the west stand was a spectacular blow. Pakistan used seven bowlers within the first nine overs as captain Shahid Afridi searched for an answer.

The ageing Akhtar, blowing hard, still gave it everything and got up to 149km/h. He retains some zip and his pace got him three wickets.

Offspinner Saeed Ajmal showed what a crafty operator he is. Another 20 runs and this would have been an interesting finish.

"I'm not very happy," Afridi grumbled afterwards.

Yet there was enough to suggest there will be some decent battles in the coming weeks.

The second T20 is in Hamilton tomorrow night.

T20 HAT-TRICKS

Brett Lee (Australia) v Bangladesh, Cape Town 2007-08

Jacob Oram (New Zealand) v Sri Lanka, Colombo 2009

Tim Southee (New Zealand) v Pakistan, Eden Park 2010

BEST T20 FIGURES

Umar Gul (Pakistan) 3-0-6-5 v New Zealand, The Oval, June 2009

Tim Southee (New Zealand) 4-1-18-5 v Pakistan, Eden Park, December 2010

Ryan McLaren (South Africa) 3.5-0-19-5 v West Indies, Antigua, May 2010

Nehemiah Odhiambo (Kenya) 4-0-20-5 v Scotland, Nairobi, February 2010

Darren Sammy (West Indies) 3.5-0-26-5 v Zimbabwe, Trinidad, February 2010