WELLINGTON: Pakistan were outdone again by New Zealand in the fifth and last One-Day International of the 5-match series that the hosts swept convincingly, apart from this nail-biting game.
New Zealand batted first in the fifth ODI of the series. The hosts were already leading the series 4-Nil and it was a perfect start as openers Guptill and Munro put up a 52-run partnership before Munro was caught by Mohammed Hafeez off Rumman Raees’s bowling. However, the damage had been done as the opener had taken just 24 balls to score that many runs with the help of 7 boundaries.
Guptill went on to build two more huge partnerships with Kane Williamson (22) and Ross Taylor (59) before he got out at exactly 100 runs. It was his 12th century in ODIs. New Zealand were 213 for 3 when Guptill got out and seemed poised to score a massive total. But Pakistan bowlers fought back and as Nichols, Latham and and Santner followed each other to the pavilion after scoring 1, 2 and 1 respectively, Pakistan were able to limit the hosts to 271 for 7, giving themselves a chance to register a consolation win.
Rumman Raees was the pick of the bowlers getting three wickets. Faheem Ashraf got 2 wickets while Aamer Yamin secured 1. Mitchell Santner was run out.
Pakistan’s batting woes continued however as yet another opening pair failed to deliver. Umar Amin was sent as an opener in this game along with Fakhar Zaman but he could only manage a paltry 2 runs before being caught by Taylor off Henry’s bowling. And that opened the floodgates. Henry soon sent Zaman (12) too back to the pavilion. Babar Azam failed to deliver yet again as he too was picked by Henry and all of a sudden Pakistan found themselves gasping at 31 for 3.
Hafeez was the next to go. He scored 6 off 29 balls while skipper Sarfraz Ahmed played his short innings at almost the same strike rate taking 14 balls to score half the runs his predecessor had scored. Haris Sohail stood firm on the other end though and was able to put up a 105-run resistance before he was taken out by Santner. Henry was involved again as he took the all-important catch.
Shadab Khan couldn’t survive much longer afterwards as he too was gone 9 runs later, falling victim to the same bowler. A 31-run partnership between Faheem Ashraf and Aamer Yamin, another 33-run partnership between Yamin and Mohammad Nawaz and a final 21-run partnership between Yamin and Rumman Rasse gave Pakistan some hope as the nail-biter went to the wire, with Pakistan needing 16 runs off 7 balls when Henry took his 4th wicket, Raees, on the last ball of the 49th over.
Pakistan have now been whitewashed in the 5-ODI series. Martin Guptill was declared Man of the Match as well as Man of the Series.
The two teams will play the first T20I on Monday, January 22.