If Pakistan's greatest contribution to limited-overs bowling is the reverse-swinging yorker at the death, New Zealand's is middle-overs strangulation by stump-to-stump seam-up.
Other teams have had their share of this kind of bowler — Ian Harvey, the latter-day Steve Waugh, Adam Hollioake, Wavell Hinds, Sachin Tendulkar when he doesn't bowl spin. But thanks to its dearth of real strike bowlers for large periods of its one-day history, New Zealand has had to rely heavily on them.
Gavin Larsen, Chris Harris, Rod Latham and Willie Watson formed — in no particular order — the Dibbly, Dobbly, Wibbly and Wobbly quartet during New Zealand's run to the semifinals at the 1992 World Cup.
Eight years later, New Zealand secured its only major ODI title at the ICC Champions Trophy in Nairobi. Chris Cairns and Harris won the final with a 122-run sixth-wicket partnership, but it wouldn't have been possible without those miserly merchants of military medium, Scott Styris and Nathan Astle.
Their stingy spells helped contain India, after an opening stand of 141 in just 26.3 overs, to 264.
Some of these trundlers were specialist bowlers, some were all-rounders of a kind and others little more than part-timers. But all of them brought their personalities into their bowling. Gavin Larsen was the tightest of the lot, and boasted an economy rate of 3.76 in 121 matches.
Chris Harris bowled a clever slower ball out of the back of his hand, and was about as good a fielder off his own bowling as anyone in the game's history. Craig McMillan clocked speeds in the low 120s on a good day, but that didn't stop him from trying to bounce the best of batsmen.
This kind of bowling is a facet of the game that is supposed to have died out with shortened boundaries and meatier bats. On the typical one-day wickets of this century, where batsmen can trust the pace and bounce at all times, it probably has. On a pitch like the one at Rajkot, on which 350 has been breached three times in the last two matches, the middle overs are practically non-existent.
But on Sunday, the Nehru Stadium in Guwahati provided New Zealand's medium-pacers a surface on which they could hold their own. The odd ball stopped on the batsmen, or straightened or nipped back a fraction. Grant Elliott and Scott Styris trundled up, and delivered from close to the stumps whippy, back of a length deliveries that Virat Kohli and, in particular, Yuvraj Singh, struggled to time off the square. Their combined figures read 11-0-50-0.
Had Daniel Vettori been available, the Kiwis might have restricted India to 250 instead of 276. As it happened, off-spinner Nathan McCullum released the pressure, conceding five boundaries to Yuvraj in the space of three overs.
During next year's World Cup, New Zealand will encounter the whole gamut of sub-continental pitches. One some, the likes of Styris, Elliott and Jesse Ryder might struggle to contain batsmen. But other wickets might give them just the sort of assistance they need — a little bit of grip, or slightly uneven bounce.
Useful attack
In tow with Vettori and the specialist seamers, the Black Caps might have quite a useful attack — especially in the knock-out stages, and especially at a ground like Colombo's Premadasa Stadium, notorious for its chronic inability to hold up for a 100-over duration.
Of course, New Zealand is in no position to dream right now, having just lost its seventh straight ODI.
Some of its batsmen, for a start, will need to show far more application through the rest of the ongoing series than they did on Sunday. Certainly, the injured players — Vettori, Ryder and Brendon McCullum — were missed. But the others needed to shoulder more of the burden, and came short.
Martin Guptill, who can make the most difficult strokes look ridiculously simple, didn't once attempt the mundane, and was out hitting an off-spinner down long-on's throat, after he'd been dropped twice. Ross Taylor batted beautifully for his 66, and was unfortunate not to get the support he deserved.
In the end, all this added up to cause the Kiwis to fold up 40 runs short. Over the last two decades, New Zealand has been admired for executing the simple things consistently and for its ability to coalesce into a whole more formidable than the sum of its parts.
The Kiwis displayed those qualities through most of the Test series. There is no reason why they cannot summon up that spirit again over the next four one-dayers and beyond.
