Craig McMillan McMillan and Oram lift New Zealand to 190
Sept 16 - A breezy 45 from Brendon McCullum set the base before Craig McMillan and Jacob Oram turned it into a slogathon with some violent late-order hitting to take New Zealand to a healthy 190.

It was a cat-and-mouse game during the first half of the innings. The momentum kept swinging from one side to the other with the batsmen counterattacking after a couple of good overs before the spinners started to apply the squeeze. Harbhajan Singh was the top performer for India, punctuating his offspinners with doosras and quicker ones and bamboozling the batsmen into suicidal strokes. But, the batsmen had the last laugh, with Oram and McMillan wielding the long-handle effectively, to exhibit that this is indeed a batsman's game.

The tone was set right at the start with Sreesanth moving the ball around late off a fuller length to trouble the batsmen and RP Singh, who repeatedly hit the back of the length, broke through when Lou Vincent pulled limply for Dinesh Karthik to hold a sharp catch at cover.

But McCullum counterattacked immediately, driving Sreesanth nuts with three gorgeous drives before square-driving and pulling Singh to the boundary. Dhoni responded by drafting in Ajit Agarkar and Irfan Pathan and the run-rate dipped a touch. Dhoni continued to ring in the changes, bringing in Harbhajan Singh and that paid rich dividends.

Harbhajan tied up Peter Fulton with his offspinners before ripping a front-of-hand faster one to trap him in front. McCullum, who was starved off the strike, perished off the second ball he faced from Harbhajan, slog-sweeping a floater to long-on. When Ross Taylor failed to connect with his favourite slog-sweep and Scott Styris was found short by a direct hit from Yuvraj Singh, things looked bleak for New Zealand but they got out of the hole in style with another furious counterattack. This time, India had no answers.

In the 16th over Jacob Oram swung two towering sixes over long-on while Craig McMillan pinged the straight boundary and the long-leg boundary as Yuvraj was looted for 25 runs.

Three more sixes in the 18th over, off Sreesanth, saw New Zealand gallop away to a strong total. McMillan scythed one over long-off, swat-pulled the other over long-on before Oram sliced one over deep point. The carnage was truly on as Vettori pinched three more fours and McMillan slugged a six in the 19th over off Agarkar to push the total close to 200. India will have summon up greater violence if they are to overhaul this target.

       
         

Your Ad Here