England produce show of pride
- 15 Feb 08, 09:24 AM
Any win would do for England before the start of the match in Auckland, and although they made hard work of it, at least they reversed the trend of the last two one-sided encounters, and the series remains alive.
New Zealand were reduced to 95-6 after being put in on a good surface, despite Eden Park’s notoriously short boundaries restricted further by the rope, and had Jacob Oram been given out lbw by umpire Rauf when only on five, they would have been snuffed out cheaply.
But he survived and combined with Daniel Vettori to add 74 vital runs, with Oram scoring 88 from 91 balls, including four sixes. The bowler to suffer the most was Dimitri Mascarenhas, recalled by England at the expense of Ravi Bopara - he was hit for 55 runs from seven overs, and Paul Collingwood erred in bowling him one more over than was necessary.
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