da doce： Stephen Fleming had a thoroughly satisfactory day out
da bwin： Siddhartha Vaidyanathan in Mohali25-Oct-2006
For Stephen Fleming it was a day to cherish © Getty Images
He started the fight with a battling effort on a juicy track and ended thecontest with a fine catch. In between he became the captain with mostnumber of caps and runs. At the end of the day, he’d enabled New Zealandto cruise into the semi-finals, becoming the first side to do so in thiscompetition. Stephen Fleming, as he admitted at the end of the day, really”couldn’t have asked for more”.”The number of balls that passed the bat and the number of inside edgesthat went for one, could have been out on any other day,” he said. “But we made the most of it and put up a pretty competitive score.”If Fleming’s innings was important for New Zealand to stay in the contest,Shane Bond’s final spell, when the game was really up for grabs, sealedit. In the first over of his second spell, Bond first knocked overMohammad Yousuf, who’s gorgeous 71 threatened to win it for Pakistan,before accounting for the dangerous Razzaq a couple of overs later. “Itwas such a crucial moment,” admitted Fleming. “He [Yousuf] was batting sowell. I brought the strike bowler back and got the wicket. Just delightedwe sort of treading the water a little bit, needed something to happen.”What we saw was a guy with extra pace,” he continued while talking of aspell that was furious in its execution. Bond cleverly used the dew-factorto his advantage, digging in the shot balls and exploiting the zip. “He’salso extremely smart,” Fleming assessed, “he bowls different pace bouncersin the slog overs, that is the kind of things he works on. He is also veryquick on his day.”What New Zealand also had to counter was the wetness, a critical factordespite chemicals being sprayed on the outfield. “It was pretty wet,”Fleming said,” and everyone did everything in their power to make it asdry as possible. We changed the balls many times as possible. It was stillwet, but we were able to cope with it. Daniel Vettori, in particular,bowled extremely well.”Scott Styris, who’d top-scored with a vital 86, couldn’t take the fieldafter injuring his back and Fleming hoped he would recover in time for thesem-final. “His back and hamstring is still pretty tight. His backstiffened up quite dramatically, so we have to see how he copes up. Shanealso had a twinge with his hamstring. That is why we made him bowl therest of his overs instead of waiting till the death.”
