Pakistan's and New-Zealand's chance of Redemption

Pakistan's tour of New-Zealand will start later this week. Both of these teams are desperate to win. On one side we have Pakistan, a team that has been effected a lot by controversies on and off the field in the past year or so. They haven't won an ODI or a test series in over a year and their performance in Twenty20, a format which they were the best at, has also suffered a setback.

On the other hand we have New-Zealand, a team that has just come back after a winless tour of the sub-continent after they lost an ODI series to Bangladesh 4-0, a test series to India 1-0 and also suffered a white wash at the hands of India in a 5 match ODI series. They are now on the verge making a new record of "most consecutive losses" in the history of New-Zealand cricket.

Bottom line both these teams are desperate for a series win and this tour is a perfect opportunity for both the teams to redeem themselves before the start of World Cup which start in less then 2 months!

Batting:Batting is a major concern for both of these teams. Both of these teams have suffered batting collapses on numerous occasions in their recent series'. Pakistan's batting lineup has several talented batsmen but temperament is what they lack, but with likes of power hitters like Afridi, Akmal and Razzaq you never know when they fire.

New-Zealand's batting lineup is full with power hitters like Brendon McCullum and also batmen like Scott Styris and Ross Taylor who you can relied upon.

Nevertheless, batting is the weakness of both of these teams and is an area where they need to improve.

Bowling:
Pakistan's bowling attack has been responsible for making batting lineups collapse and thus bowling remains their strong area, their attack even without the likes of Asif and Amir looks dangerous and almost everyone knows how to reverse swing the old bowl. With the express pace of Shoiab Akhtar, deadly yorkers of Umar Gul, good line and length from Wahab Riaz and Razzaq and the tantalizing doosras of Saeed Ajmal, Pakistan's bowling lineup will always create problems for the batsmen.

However New-Zealand's bowling isn't bad either, with the likes of Chris Martin, McKay, Mills and Vettori they can be really tough to face as well and will be really testing for Pakistan's young and "prone to collapse" batting lineup.

Who's got the edge:
Looking at the past few series' of both the teams, I would say that Pakistan has the advantage. Although both of these two teams haven't won a series in a while, Pakistan's performance have been far better in the past two series' that they have lost, Pakistan has lost they past 2 limited over series by 3-2 while New-Zealand lost 4-0 to Bangladesh and 5-0 to India. New-Zealand however do have the advantage of being the home side this time.