Black Caps sweep Bangladesh in T20 series
Approaching 9pm on Thursday, the prospect of any cricket in Auckland appeared fanciful at best.
By 10pm, Finn Allen was walking off Eden Park with 71 next to his name after 29 balls of futuristic cricket.
Allen’s maiden 50 was the centrepiece of the Black Caps’ imposing 141-4 off their allotted 10 overs as the Black Caps put a boldtype exclamation point on their extraordinary season.
It was always going to be a tall order to chase it down. After eight overs Bangladesh were 70-8 needing 36 an over off the final two to win.
They ended a miserable tour by being dismissed for 76 in 9.4 overs, handing New Zealand the win by 65 runs and taking their record at home against Bangladesh to 32-0.
New Zealand played 21 matches this summer, winning 17, losing three with a no result. They won all seven series, cleansweeping four of them (and likely robbed by rain of making that five).
They did it while playing half the matches without their best batsman and while rolling out some experimental line-ups.
That they got a match in at all on Thursday was crazy. Auckland was doused in heavy rain for most of the day, with the weather accounting for the T20 decider between the
White Ferns and Australia after just 17 balls.
Ten overs with 10 wickets in hand means batsmen can approach the task with clarity of thought. That thought is: hit every ball as hard and as far as you can.
That doesn’t require a huge mindset shift for Allen, but what it does is remove any consequence of failure.
It’s a liberating feeling and Allen and Martin Guptill batted like libertines.
After five overs they’d put on 69 with five sixes between them, one a 95m monster high into the West Stand by Guptill.
They were separated four balls later, by which time the score had advanced to 85 and Guptill had cleared the rope twice more. He departed trying for another — but his 44 off 19 hadn’t just set the table, he had helped dish out the main course too.
Bangladesh struggled in the field with at least five skiers finding the turf.
Their “efforts” were put into context after five balls of their chase when Tim Southee showed incredible athleticism to take a return catch to dismiss Soumya Sarkar for 10. With his next ball he clean bowled Liton Das.
Todd Astle enjoyed a nice return to national colours, the leggie picking up two wickets in his first over, two in his second and finishing with 4-13, while Southee finished with 3-15.
Women rained out
Earlier, the White Ferns drew their Twenty20 series with Australia after the third and final match was abandoned due to persistent rain.
The match managed to get under way 90 minutes after the scheduled 3pm start, but after 17 deliveries overs the rain returned and the players retired to the sheds.
The White Ferns had a chance to seal a rare series victory over Australia with their series tied at 1-all.
And, with Australia struggling at 14-1 in the reduced 13-over clash, their chances were enhanced for their first series win over their transtasman neighbours since 2017.
The teams now prepare for a three-match ODI series, which begins tomorrow, with the White Ferns having failed to beat the dominant Australian ODI squad in a series since 2000 — with 17 consecutive series defeats.