Visitors Pakistan would want to ensure their white-ball game isn’t all doom and gloom, while hosts NZ are keen to blood-in new talent

Danyal Rasool28-Mar-2025If Pakistan thought they were at rock bottom before they turned up in New Zealand, the hosts spent the entirety of the T20I series disabusing them of that notion. Sandwiched between one surprise win in the third T20I, Pakistan picked up hidings in Christchurch and Dunedin before travelling up to the North Island for another couple at Mount Maunganui and Wellington. Each game demonstrated how rapidly Pakistan were sinking, and how much further they could still possibly plunge.Little that could happen in the ODIs will convince anyone they have resurfaced. Not least because this is the point in the calendar when ODIs matter least of all, weeks out from the end of a Champions Trophy that went very differently for both sides. The ODI World Cup remains a couple of years away, and the satisfaction of a bilateral ODI trophy in the midst of IPL season and the PSL just a fortnight away will be ephemeral.Besides, the ODIs these two played in Pakistan in the Champions Trophy as well as the build-up to it were a true enough indication of their respective current qualities. With each side boasting full-strength sides – unlike, at least for New Zealand, this series – New Zealand convincingly beat Pakistan on three occasions, going on to win a tri-series as well as making a run all the way to the final of the Champions Trophy. Pakistan, at home, won just one game in five and crashed out of their prestigious home tournament five days after it began.Pakistan have brought in their more experienced players and boast a largely full-strength squad, insofar as that means much given the pathos of the visitors’ current cricketing state. Babar Azam, Mohammad Rizwan, and Naseem Shah are all back, while Haris Rauf was added earlier this week.Besides, somewhat bizarrely, Pakistan come into this series with a surprisingly good bilateral away record. The ODIs in Pakistan’s leg of their season may not quite have gone according to plan, but before that, they won three successive bilateral series away from home, losing two games and winning seven as they bested Australia, Zimbabwe and South Africa. It was partly why there was such unbridled, and ultimately, ill-placed optimism in the build-up to the Champions Trophy; this was the one format Pakistan still felt they were highly competitive in.Related

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They may still be over the next week, even as eyeballs this season will be defined by where they fell short instead. On tracks that suited their fast bowlers, Pakistan played an attractive brand of cricket that focused on getting opposition sides out early – ideally within 40 overs and all through the high pace of their quick bowlers. It took a lot of pressure off their batters, who ended up making short work of what their bowlers had guaranteed were below-par chases.However, this relied on a few key factors that do not necessarily chime as favourably for the visitors at present. Saim Ayub’s glittering run of form was instrumental in establishing that path to victory, his combination of big runs at high strike rates breaking the backs of most totals. Shaheen Afridi, meanwhile, looked more impressive towards the tail-end of that 2024 season than he ever has since his injury in 2022, but has been dropped from this format after poor showings in the ODIs in Pakistan. It makes it trickier to recreate a winning template at the very time Pakistan have well and truly broken out of their winnings habits.New Zealand have no such problems with winning habits. It is perhaps unfair, if not uncharacteristic, for one to have to scroll this far down to see first mention for a side that manages to combine machine-like consistency with such joyfully progressive cricket, all on a shoestring budget and, in sheer numbers, a vanishingly small pool of players.But they know how to do this, having taken part in several series against Pakistan over the last three years that have required them to field second or third-string sides. It was mentioned, at least patronisingly if not disparagingly, that a number of their squads for Pakistan tours appeared to have a Plunket Shield or Super Smash feel to it.But New Zealand have gone on to demonstrate this as a sign of quality rather than weakness, as evidenced by their impressive strength in depth most recently in their T20I hammering of Pakistan in the absences of multiple stalwarts.Even in the ODI series, the fresh, exciting talent comes from the hosts rather than the visitors, including the upcoming debut of 21-year old Lahore-born allrounder Mohammad Abbas, whose father Azhar Abbas once played first-class cricket in Pakistan. The 23-year old Canterbury batter Rhys Mariu, who averages just under 62 for his first-class side, has also been called up following Tom Latham’s sidelining with a hand fracture, while 22-year old legspinner Adithya Ashok returns to the ODI squad. Under the captaincy of Michael Bracewell and the more established core of the New Zealand side, it is hard to imagine a healthier, gentler introduction to international cricket anywhere in the world.New Zealand’s stewardship of a sport that is not their national identity, through the cultivation of an elite performance culture that straddles the balance between demanding excellence and sinking their players under the weight of those demands, has seen this side rise to the top in a financial environment where they have no right to do so. Pakistan’s profligacy with their finances, inconsistency of vision, and impulsive short-term decision-making on the other hand makes them the antithesis of all of that.A contest between single-sport cricket mad nation of a quarter of a billion against a pair of Pacific Islands where five million people would probably rather play rugby, this contest should be a mismatch. Of late, it has been shown to be exactly that. Just not the way you might think.