Against Pakistan it's something that's not new. NZ have a history of doing poorly against our faster men, both in test and one-day internationals.

I rember Mohammad Sami's amazing burst of 5 for 2 at Lahore in 2003, New Zealand crumbled from 155 for 4 to 157 all out, this was only one of many such collapses that the New Zealanders have suffered against Pakistan in recent years. In fact, in Sami's debut Test, at Auckland in 2000-01, New Zealand collapsed just as spectacularly, losing their last eight wickets for 10 runs, with Sami taking five of those wickets to end up with the Man-of-the-Match award. In the one-dayers which preceded the Tests on that tour, New Zealand had been at the receiving end of another blitz at the same venue, this time by Shoaib Akhtar, who took 5 for 19 – his career-best ODI figures at the time – and destroyed the tail, as New Zealand lost their last five wickets for seven runs.

Shoaib wasn't quite done, though. When New Zealand came to Pakistan for that ill-fated tour in 2002 which was curtailed due to a bomb blast, Shoaib wrecked more havoc. In the first ODI, he surpassed his Auckland performance, taking 6 for 16 at Karachi. Less than two weeks later, New Zealand –reeling from Inzamam's mighty triple-hundred – succumbed meekly to yet more Shoaib thunderbolts, as his 6 for 11 doomed them to a humiliating innings defeat in the only Test of the series. That was also Shoaib's first – and so far his only – Test against New Zealand. Add Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis to the list and, as the table below shows, New Zealand have had more than their fair share of problems against Pakistan's pace attack.

ps: these stats as well as the brief intro above it were combiled by the Numbers Game column at crickinfo before we'd won 1-0 in NZ, in that series Sami and Shoaib further improved their avergaes, though I'm not bothering to gather statistics, summary is that in the first test match Sami took a late five-for to reduce them to 90-8 and we should have won had rain not interveened And in the second test Shoaib took about 11 wickets if not less and second time around NZ were sitting pretty with 70 odd for 3 and 200 odd runs ahead, but they collapsed to 100 odd all out, and we chased the runs down with Inzi and Youhanna making unbeaten half centuries before rain almost washed out this win for us too