Mark Gillespie’s 4/7 was the best bowling ever in a 20/20 international....

Until last night Umar Gul took 5/6 in 3 overs to finally put down a woeful Blackcaps team. The innings started poorly as Abdul ‘I bet you though I was retired’ Razzak took two early wickets. Aaron Redmond was unable to repeat his heroics from the other day and was out meekly. Scott Styris top scored with 22 (at a leisurely strike rate of 76). That was it, the next highest score was Aaron Redmond’s 15, then McCullum with 12 and he was out in the 2nd over. After Umar Gul gave a master class in bowling Full and straight, Vettori was the last man out with the score just 99.

There’s not much to say, Pakistan didn’t really struggle in chasing down the required 100 runs, achieving that on the first ball of the 14th over when Afridi skied the ball, and was dropped as two kiwi fielders collided, Brendon McCullum reeling away with what looked like a wrist injury. Vettori tool a couple of wickets and bowled well in his first game of the tournament, Ian Butler had his first poor performance of the tournament but was suffering from, a groin strain and was clearly struggling.

It was unfortunate for NZ that the Pakistani’s decided to play dynamite today, they are a little like the French rugby side, you don’t know which side to expect......But a really shit effort by NZ, who now must beat an impressive Sri Lankan effort if they want to make it to the semis. It was a terrible match for all the Kiwis, you might think it would be unfair to single out any individual, but I will. An individual, who has performed well in recent memory, is plagued by injuries, and only shot is to hit the ball straight up and hope like hell it gets dropped. I’m of course talking about ‘Big Jake’. This is not your big brothers Jacob Oram of yesteryear, moosing 6’s and bowling economic med-fast spells. The 2009 model Jacob Oram can’t score runs, concedes runs like its nobody’s business and doesn’t take wickets. In fact in 17 international 20/20 fixtures he has 3 wickets at a strike rate of 112.33. Awful.