Dunedin
\nNew Zealand men\u2019s openers went on a six-hitting blitz on Tuesday to thrash Pakistan by five wickets and go 2-0 up in their Twenty20 series.
\nThe home side reached 137-5 with 11 balls to spare in Dunedin to take control of the five-match series after Pakistan posted 135-9 off 15 overs in a rain-reduced second match.
\nNew Zealand\u2019s highlight was a ferocious opening stand between Tim Seifert and Finn Allen in which seven of the first eight scoring shots were sixes.
\nRemarkably, Seifert played out a maiden off Shaheen Shah Afridi\u2019s opening over before Allen cleared the small University Oval boundary three times in the second over, bowled by Mohammad Ali.
\nSeifert then smashed 26 off Afridi\u2019s second over, including four sixes.
\nSeifert, who top-scored with 44 in the nine-wicket win in Christchurch on Sunday, departed on 45 off 22 balls.
\nAllen fell soon afterwards for 38 off 16, with the openers hammering five sixes each.
\nFour New Zealand wickets fell in the space of four overs midway through the chase before Mitch Hay\u2019s unbeaten 21 made the outcome safe.
\nEarlier, captain Salman Agha top-scored with 46 off 28 balls, launching a recovery after Pakistan were sent in and lost opener Hasan Nawaz without scoring for the second time in the series.
\nThey were 19-2 in the fourth over before the skipper embarked on a knock that featured four fours and three sixes.
\nShadab Khan was aggressive in the middle order with 26 off 14 balls and Afridi was not-out 22 off 14.
\nFour New Zealand bowlers took two wickets, including seamer Ben Sears and all-rounder Jimmy Neesham, who were both recalled, in place of Tim Robinson and Kyle Jamieson.
\nNew Zealand can wrap up the series if victorious in game three in Auckland on Friday.
\nPakistan\u2019s one change for the match was the introduction of seamer Haris Rauf for leg-spinner Abrar Ahmed.
\nThe start was delayed for 90 minutes because of rain at University Oval.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dunedin New Zealand men\u2019s openers went on a six-hitting blitz on Tuesday to thrash Pakistan by five wickets and go 2-0 up in their Twenty20 series. The home side reached 137-5 with 11 balls to spare in Dunedin to take control of the five-match series after Pakistan posted 135-9 off 15 overs in a rain-reduced …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":78580,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78569"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78569\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78585,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78569\/revisions\/78585"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}