Cricket: Jacob Duffy Makes Impressive Debut As Black Caps Go Unbeaten This Summer

Friday night means only one thing in Lumsden: the chicken wing special at the Lumsden Hotel.

Yet if the locals looked up from their steaming plate of buffalo wings with blue cheese sauce for just a second, they would have seen one of their own enjoying one of the most electrifying international debuts.

Looking like the happiest man in the country, fresh Jacob Duffy ripped off the top of Pakistan’s batting order and then took the most spectacular uncaught of the year, leaping high at the third-man limit to grab a one-handed stunner. , only to be undone on review when it was discovered that your fingernail grazed the boundary string.

The Black Caps continued their undefeated summer at home, beating Pakistan by five wickets and seven balls to spare.

Duffy, 26, joined the Otago team as a highly hyped teenager and has spent the past eight years connecting to the domestic scene free from hype.

In that time he has played 67 first-class matches, 54 A-List one-day matches and 67 T20 franchise matches. In other words, he has delivered 15,718 balls to take his 369 wickets.

He only needed four to take a wicket wearing the full national colors for the first time. He only needed seven more for his second and followed with a third a ball later.

His first shot at international cricket, in the toughest format of the game for bowlers, on a field that sometimes eats his own (remember Ben Wheeler), he returned 4-0-33-4, the number only exploded when he was hammered three sixes on his last four balls.

That end of his spell, when he curiously changed his angle of attack from his first three overs, will be the pebble under the towel that he returns to the Volts when he leaves the team to make way for test players, but it shouldn’t ‘Don’t let that worries you for a long time. Things can go wrong very fast on this one terrain postage stamp.

People around Duffy don’t tend to get overly excited about anything other than trout sting in the Oreti River or Bill English’s speeches, but his impressive debut is sure to grease the wheels of conversation in North Southland this week.

It started on the second change, the first, when Abdullah Shafique, in just his second T20I, attempted a drive loft that launched himself at Mark Chapman. The carnage continued in his second as Pakistani Mohammad Rizwan kicked one to cover and the coup de grace came when he again induced a false shot, this time from veteran Mohammad Hafeez.

When Scott Kuggeleijn and Ish Sodhi moved on to the Haider Ali and Khushdil Shah grounds to leave the visitors at 39-5, the prospect of a short night of work was real.

First-time captain Shadab Khan revived innings with 42, but his hit ended on the first ball of Duffy’s endgame.

Faheem Ashraf (31 of 18) added a bit of sparkle, but 153-9 is not an Eden Park score of any note.

However, the attack got off to a strong start and when Martin Guptill pulled off a brilliant capture of Shadab against the always awkward Shaheen Shah Afridi, nerves could have started to seep below the surface.

It might also be time to officially classify Guptill as out of shape. He hasn’t scored a 50 in any way since the first top-class game of the season and seems caught between the worlds of trying to hit or rebuild again.

Devon Conway missed for the first time for the Black Caps, but Glenn Phillips and Tim Seifert posted 44 to make New Zealand the favorites again when the former hit 23 at 65-3.

Seifert later teamed up with Mark Chapman for a partnership that improved upon the previous one by one run, but he pocketed Shaheen at an inopportune time, with a necessary 44 of five and a half overs. His 57 was a good inning, but you know he should have been there in the end.

Chapman followed the previous leg by 34. Like Seifert, his was a pleasant inning in what should have been a win.

That prompted Captain Mitchell Santner to join Jimmy Neesham, the heroes of the last T20 here against the West Indies. This time they weren’t forced to do anything so dramatic, although the symmetry was perfect: Neesham, the dominant partner; Santner hit the six to win.

Pakistan had won the last five meetings between the two sides in this format, the last being a 47-run win in Dubai two years ago.

That streak is broken, thanks to a boy from the Deep South who has long been waiting for a chance to shine.