Saturday, March 5, 2011

New Zealand, West Indies Stunner win against Zim & Bangla....

New Zealand 166 for 0 (Guptill 86*, B McCullum 76*) beat Zimbabwe 162 (Taylor 44, Southee 3-29, Vettori 2-25) by 10 wickets





New Zealand wrapped up a thumping 10-wicket win over Zimbabwe in Ahmedabad, surpassing the Zimbabweans in every department to set up a victory that will reinvigorate their World Cup campaign. They started by making light work of a timid batting line-up, Tim Southee picking up 3 for 29 as four of the top seven failed to reach double figures and Zimbabwe limped to 162. Martin Guptill and Brendon McCullum then sealed the result with the highest opening stand of this tournament and New Zealand's best in World Cups, as the target was overhauled with more than 16 overs to spare.
New Zealand went into this game level on points with Zimbabwe, the teams ranked fourth and fifth in Group A with one victory and one defeat each and separated only by net run-rate. Beating Zimbabwe, especially considering the sheer scale of their win, means that, in all probability they will need only one more victory to book a place in the quarterfinals, with a game against Canada in hand.
West Indies 59 for 1 (Gayle 37*) beat Bangladesh 58 (Benn 4-18) by nine wickets
Bangladesh's batsmen froze catastrophically in a performance that was a throwback to their years of ineptitude in the early 2000s, as West Indies sauntered to a nine-wicket victory in a contest that spanned just 31.1 overs. As the mood within a packed and expectant Mirpur stadium turned from excitement to fury, with subsequent reports of an attack on the Windies' team bus, Bangladesh shipped all ten wickets in 18.5 overs to be routed for 58 - the lowest total ever made by a Full Member nation in World Cup history.
It was a craven performance in a critical contest. With the permutations in Group B blown wide open by England's loss to the Irish, both teams knew that the winner of this match would have one foot firmly planted in the quarter-finals. However, the cool efforts of Sulieman Benn, Kemar Roach and Darren Sammy - the only three West Indian bowlers called upon - proved too much for a feckless batting line-up that never tried to recover from the third-ball dismissal of its linchpin, Tamim Iqbal



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