Inzi's milestone, and top-order baiters

Inzi on a roll
The third one-day international between Pakistan and New Zealand was fairly unspectacular, but it was a special occasion for Inzamam-ul-Haq, who joined a select - but fast growing - band of players to have played 300 one-day internationals. Of the seven players in the list, six are from the subcontinent, which is a fair indication of the sizeable number of one-dayers played by India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. (Steve Waugh, with 325 matches over a 16-year career, is the only exception.)

Five of the six subcontinent players are batsmen, and a comparison of their batting stats are quite revealing. All of them show a distinct preference for batting in the subcontinent, but the contrast in most stark for Inzamam: an average of 29.55 shoots up to over 50 when playing on the flat pitches of the subcontinent. Six of his eight centuries have been scored there, with four of them coming in Sharjah. It's an entirely different story when he plays in Australia, England, South Africa and New Zealand - in all four countries, he averages below 30.

Batsmen from the subcontinent in the 300-ODI club
		In subcontinent			Outside
	Career Ave	ODI	Runs	Ave(1)	ODI	Runs	Ave(2)	Diff (2-1)
Tendulkar	45.14	190	7869	47.69	131	4816	41.52	-6.17
Inzamam	38.98	148	5485	50.32	152	3871	29.55	-20.77
Azharuddin	36.92	221	6229	38.21	113	3149	34.60	-3.61
Aravinda	34.90	189	6146	38.65	119	3138	29.33	-9.33
Jayasuriya	31.96	184	5685	33.64	124	3487	29.55	-4.09

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Crumbling against pace
Not only did New Zealand get walloped in two of the first three one-dayers against Pakistan, an old weakness resurfaced as well. Mohammad Sami's amazing burst of 5 for 2 at Lahore, as New Zealand crumbled from 155 for 4 to 157 all out, was only the latest in a spate of collapses that the New Zealanders have suffered against Pakistan in recent years.

In fact, in Sami's debut Test, at Auckland in 2000-01, New Zealand collapsed just as spectacularly, losing their last eight wickets for 10 runs, with Sami taking five of those wickets to end up with the Man-of-the-Match award. In the one-dayers which preceded the Tests on that tour, New Zealand had been at the receiving end of another blitz at the same venue, this time by Shoaib Akhtar, who took 5 for 19 - his career-best ODI figures at the time - and destroyed the tail, as New Zealand lost their last five wickets for seven runs.

Shoaib wasn't quite done, though. When New Zealand came to Pakistan for that ill-fated tour in 2002 which was curtailed due to a bomb blast, Shoaib wrecked more havoc. In the first ODI, he surpassed his Auckland performance, taking 6 for 16 at Karachi. Less than two weeks later, New Zealand -reeling from Inzamam's mighty triple-hundred - succumbed meekly to yet more Shoaib thunderbolts, as his 6 for 11 doomed them to a humiliating innings defeat in the only Test of the series. That was also Shoaib's first - and so far his only - Test against New Zealand. Add Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis to the list and, as the table below shows, New Zealand have had more than their fair share of problems against Pakistan's pace attack.

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Top-order baiters
The scalp of a No. 11 batsman is - at least statistically - worth just as much as that of a top-order player, but ask any top-class bowler and he'll tell just how much more satisfying it is to dismiss a recognised batsman. So who are the bowlers who have the highest percentage of wickets comprising of the top six batsmen? Among bowlers with at least 250 Test wickets, Allan Donald leads the way, with Brian Statham and Glenn McGrath following closely. In fact, very little separates the top 10 in this list, among whom Derek Underwood is the only spinner. Imran Khan (top-order percentage of 63.26) and Waqar Younis (62.73) just miss out on a top ten spot, while Bishan Bedi (62.03) is the second-highest spinner in the list at No. 14. As the table below indicates, the leading modern-day spinners' tallies are made up of a significant number of tail-end victims.