Pakistan vs New Zealand, 3rd ODI at Sharjah, , Dec 14 2014 - Match Result

The teams now move on to Abu Dhabi for the last two matches of the series. Pakistan one step away from wrapping it up, New Zealand one step away from making it interesting.... We will be back with our coverage too. Thanks for all your feedback and comments. Ciao ciao

"Our strength is aggression," Shahid Afridi says. "The only way of defence should be aggression. Everyone imbibed that. Batsmen played their part, bowlers played theirs. We were in a good position, so I came up the order to take advantage of the powerplay. Every game is a new game, so you have to keep repeating performances like this because we know New Zealand will want to come back hard. I have almost grown up in Sharjah. So thanks to the organisers and the crowd here.

Ahmed Shehzad is named Man of the Match. He says, "I have been hitting the ball throughout but the finishing touch was missing. But watching Hafeez, I got a lot of confidence. The pitch here doesn't bounce much - last match was a bit surprising - but I worked hard with the coaches to work on those areas."

"You could look at different areas but Pakistan batted brilliantly from start to finish," says Kane Williamson. "They hit a lot of boundaries and got a lot of balls from the middle. Our performance wasn't upto par. We didn't execute our plans well. We didn't get quite the height on our short balls. We are now going on to a different surface so we need to improve."

Shahid Afridi has led Pakistan to a massive 147-run win here to help team take a 2-1 lead in the series. This has been a refined performance from Pakistan and the foundation was laid by the batsmen. Shehzad's century, Afridi's fifty from No. 5, Sarfraz's late cameo.. it all added up to Pakistan's third-best total of 364. The chase was never going to be straightforward and once Pakistan took early wickets, it was just a matter of time. Misbah embraces Afridi at the boundary.. wonder what his thoughts would be on Afridi's captaincy here..

Bilal Ahmad: "Black caps lost only 1 wicket in Batting PP while pakistan lost 2... #positivity "

RJ: "Afridi took 13 odi wkts in 2014 :)"

bhushan: "can I safely say , Wahab Riaz is an Indianish kind of Pakistani bowler.." --- Not really.. he has pace.

For whatever it's worth, it's Powerplay. Riaz comes in to up New Zealand's run rate to bowl