New Zealand 292 for 8 (Hay 99*, Abbas 41, Muqeem 2-33) beat Pakistan 208 all out (Ashraf 73, Naseem 35, Sears 5-59) by 84 runs
An unbeaten 99 from Mitchell Hay and a fearsome collective spell of fast bowling from New Zealand blew Pakistan away, inflicting an 84-run defeat as New Zealand sealed the series 2-0. Pakistan pulled New Zealand back in the first innings thanks to an unerring and penetrative spell from their spinner Sufiyan Muqeem before their death bowling failed them once more. Set 293 to keep the series alive, the contest became a formality within the first 12 overs as Pakistan lost their top half for 32.
Under cloudy skies in Hamilton, Rizwan won the toss once more and decided to put New Zealand in again, hoping a green surface would yield early wickets for his seam bowlers. Instead, New Zealand's openers Rhys Mariu and Nick Kelly - with a combined solitary ODI between them - flew out of the blocks. Pakistan were errant in their discipline once more with eight wides in the first four overs, but New Zealand set the tone with 11 off Akif Javed's first over. Another 12 off his second meant New Kelly and Mariu needed just six overs to bring up the 50-partnership, Pakistan having squandered promising bowling conditions in the first half-hour.
Haris Rauf was getting the ball to come back in, and it was that kind of delivery that brought the breakthrough. He angled one in to draw an inside edge from Kelly, and thereafter, Pakistan started to take control of the game. For once, their fielding backed up the bowlers as Babar Azam dived sharply to his right to snare a catch that sent Mariu back for a stuttering 18.
By the 15th over, New Zealand still looked healthy at 97 for 2, but Muqeem's spell changed all that. Spinning the ball both ways and using flight to great use, he needed just five deliveries to beat Mitchell in the air as he charged down the crease, Rizwan whipping the bails off. Javed helped himself to another from the other end as Nicholls, who struggled in much the same way he did in Napier, found himself stuck at the crease as a full delivery rapped his front pad in front of the stumps.
Just 25 runs came in the 11 overs between the 15th and the 25th, and that pressure began to tell. Wasim reckoned he had Bracewell when one fizzed through to the keeper off what the bowler thought was an edge, only for no one else to seemingly hear it. The following delivery, there was no doubt about the outside edge through to Rizwan, and Pakistan began to eye New Zealand's lower middle order.
Rizwan could perhaps have kept Muqeem, who was strangulating New Zealand, on from one end, but he returned to the quicks, and Hay and Muhammad Abbas slowly began to settle. It was a very different kind of innings for Abbas - who had earlier in the week become the fastest half-centurion on debut as he ground his way to 20 off his first 52, but the pair were building a partnership, as well as confidence. By the time Muqeem returned, Abbas felt confident enough to pick him off for a pair off boundaries and take 12 off his over, bringing up an attritional 50-run stand in the process.
Hay began to show his prowess from the other end as he walloped Haris Rauf for a pair of sixes, and even as Muqeem drew Abbas into miscuing one and breaking a 77-run stand, New Zealand were up past 200 with ten overs to go. Muqeem's 2-33 was by some distance the pick of Pakistan's bowling; that may encourage the bowler, but Pakistan's quicks' failure to be more effective was ominous on a strip that offered them so much.
The last six overs boiled down to a contest between Wasim and Hay, and it was a one-sided affair. Hay plundered him for 49 in his final 3 overs, including 22 off the last one; it got him up to within one run of a richly-deserved ton as New Zealand surged to 292.
On paper, it appeared well above par for the conditions, and Will O'Rourke and Jacob Duffy spent little time demonstrating exactly that. Much like the first ODI, Shafique spent a lot of time dangerously flirting with the ball with the outside edge of his bat, and when contact was made, it flew up to Daryl Mitchell at first slip, who pouched easily.
Each of the top three fell edging to slips. Babar Azam couldn't get on top of Duffy's bounce and found second slip, while Mitchell was back in action for Imam-ul-Haq as Pakistan slumped to 9 for 3. Rizwan and Salman Ali Agha also departed without getting into double figures as Ben Sears got himself among the wickets.
New Zealand's fast bowling was everything Pakistan's hadn't been - quick, accurate and consistent, and it had ended the contest within the first Powerplay. The rest of the innings was damage control and respectability restoration for Pakistan. A half-century from Faheem Ashraf when all else was lost perhaps achieved some measure of it as he showed himself to be the only Pakistan batter able to cope with the probing short length New Zealand kept nailing.
However, the blows kept coming for Pakistan, both literally and otherwise. Rauf received a sickener flush on the helmet as he took his eye off a rearing O'Rourke delivery. A lengthy visit from the physio ultimately determined he had failed a concussion test, and had to walk off. Akif Javed took one to the badge a few overs later, and, perhaps to his relief, didn't last long, top-edging to the slips to give Duffy his third wicket.
Naseem Shah, who came on as Haris' concussion substitute, played an entertaining hand alongside Ashraf, almost as if liberation from bowling responsibilities brought the best out of his batting. Some high-risk shots combined with the odd genuine cricket strokes got him to his career-best ODI score 43 off 40 as Pakistan kept frustrating New Zealand, and masking the true depth of the mismatch between these teams. Sixty runs later, Sears finally found an edge with the fourth stump line, and Ashraf's innings wrapped up with for 73 off 80.
Naseem kept bashing away, carting Smith for a glorious six over cover to bring up his career-best. A lovely whip off Nathan Smith to square leg brought up an unlikely half-century, but reality would come knocking soon enough. As he tried to launch Sears out of the ground, he only managed an outside edge through to the keeper, and New Zealand had the win they had, in truth, confirmed about 30 overs earlier.
