Black Cap collapses, and the Brown Bradman

Second-innings blues
Five Test matches in a row against Australia usually does nothing to help a team's confidence levels, and it certainly hasn't done much for New Zealand. Four times they were thrashed, and were saved once only because the weather gods took pity. New Zealand sparkled once, though, in the first match of the return leg at Christchurch, when they first had the temerity to amass 433, and then take five Australian wickets for only 160. Then, after an Adam Gilchrist-led revival, came an aspect of New Zealand's cricket that has been as infuriating for their supporters as it has been encouraging for the opposition - the inevitable second-innings collapse.

Maintaining the intensity and focus over five days is an obvious requirement of Test cricket, but it's an area where New Zealand have repeatedly been found wanting over the last few years. As the table below indicates, their batting dips by more than 50% in their second innings compared to the first (in all matches since 2003). It's an incredible statistic, which becomes even more difficult to comprehend given that most of their collapses during this period have happened in England, Australia and at home, not in the subcontinent where you'd often expect the tracks to deteriorate drastically in the latter half of Tests.

In their last 14 Tests, New Zealand have lost nine, and three of those defeats came after taking the first-innings lead. It isn't something that their fans would enjoy reliving, but Stephen Fleming has seen his team collapse quite horribly. The most embarrassing of those was surely against Pakistan in 2003-04, when they crumbled from 95 from 3 to 103 all out and went on to lose after taking a first-innings lead of 170. Six months later, at Nottingham, they squandered a lead of 65 and went down by four wickets. In both these matches, as in numerous others, batting in the third innings of a Test has been an insurmountable problem - since 2003, they average an abysmal 19 per wicket in the third innings, with some infamous collapses: 96 for 8, 103, 76, 131. Wonder what explanation John Bracewell will come up with for this one. (Click here for the inning-by-innings scores of New Zealand's Tests since 2003.)

The Brown Bradman
201, 173, 164, 155, 309, 195. These have been Virender Sehwag's last six Test centuries. A few years back, the common perception was that Sehwag was a cavalier, hit-or-miss cricketer, who'd throw it away after getting starts, who wouldn't put any value to his wicket. Not many would make those allegations against him now. Sehwag has so far scored ten centuries in 34 Tests - that's a hundred every 3.4 Tests, which puts him seventh in the all time list - but even more impressive is the contribution of hundreds to his overall aggregate. Sehwag's ten centuries add up to 1685 runs, which is 54.73% of his total runs. Only Don Bradman and the Black Bradman have a higher percentage of runs in hundreds.

And where does his average century score of 168.5 place him? In fifth place, and eight runs clear of Rahul Dravid, the next Indian in the list. There's no arguing with numbers like those, is there?

Pakistan's lower-order biffers
After playing out of their skins to draw the Test series, Pakistan will go into the one-dayers believing they can win. And what'll give them confidence is the strength of their lower middle order - the Shoaib Maliks and the Abdul Razzaqs - who have regularly converted totals of 160 after 40 overs into 250-plus scores.

In fact, a look at their scoring patterns reveal the strength and weakness of the teams - Pakistan strong point is clearly their finish, while the Indians often finish weakly after laying a reasonable foundation. Since 2003, Pakistan's average score after 40 overs, when batting first, is 166; they then add 75 in the last ten to end up with an average total of 241. India, on the other hand, usually start off much better - after 40 overs, they average 14 more than Pakistan - and yet they end up with an average total of 238, three less than Pakistan. (The numbers exclude matches played against Zimbabwe, Bangladesh and the other minnows.)