Cricket: Let's hope Pakistan offer more resistance

Chadwick Walton of the West Indies. Photo / John Da

You need to think hard to figure out a poorer team from a major cricket nation to have toured New Zealand in recent times than the West Indies.

With only the last two matches of the T20 series to go, they are winless.

Exclude the poorest Bangladesh and Zimbabwe efforts from this. But here's a quirky one.

India were thumped in their two tests in 2003 — total of 161, 121, 99 and 154 on pitches greener than pea soup — then lost the ODI series 5-2.

That's with Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, VVS Laxman, Virender Sehwag, Zaheer Khan and Harbhajan Singh in their group, too. Go figure.

Should the West Indies win the T20 series, it will simply confirm a suspicion.

The briefest form of the game (at least until T10 gains a foothold, and remember where you read that first), the version requiring the shortest attention span but offering the biggest financial rewards if a player is good enough, is the one they play best these days.

Their general sloppiness through the test and ODI series was depressing.

What on earth manager Joel Garner — he of the legendary fast bowling production line which terrorised teams for the best part of a couple of decades — and coach Stuart Law, a quality Australian cricketer in his day with a straight-shooting way about him, make of it all is anyone's guess.

How to pull the West Indies back up?

Too big for this mind to handle but the notion that the young, athletic men of the Caribbean are firmly switched on to watching and, if they're good enough, striving for the NBA is just part of the issue.

But time to look ahead. Next Saturday, the second course of the international summer is upon us, with the first of five ODIs against Pakistan. They are sure to be more competitive, have a core of quality players and while they can also be an exasperating watch when you consider their talent, they will win games and provide New Zealand with a real test.

Their batsmen include Azhar Ali, Babar Azam, Mohammad Hafeez and Shoaib Malik, all either highly experienced or gifted, or both.

Azam, 23, averages 58.6 in 36 ODIs, with seven centuries and seven fifties already. In New Zealand early last year, he rattled up 62 and 83 in his two innings. As a colleague who favours understated brevity is wont to say, he can play.

Seamer Hasan Ali is the world's top-ranked ODI bowler, with 56 wickets in 26 games at 19.8 apiece; young legspinner Shadab Khan is a bright prospect, already with the Brisbane Heat and bowls with confidence and verve.

No need to go further, you get the picture.

Talent has never been Pakistan's issue; desire and being in the right head space can be.

After yesterday's game, there are a further 20 limited-overs internationals back-to-back before the two England tests which wrap up the international season.

Just hope Pakistan bring more to the party than the West Indies have, at least so far.