After Tim Southee's heroics, it was the turn of Jerome Taylor and West Indies to make the white ball talk, and talk it did as Pakistan crashed to the most severe of defeats in this ICC Cricket World Cup 2015.
With both teams desperate for a win after their rather disappointing results, it was the West Indies who stepped up, and how, to crush Pakistan by 150 runs.
Asked to bat first in Christchurch, West Indies, smarting from the opening loss to Ireland, posted a pretty competitive 310/6 in their 50 overs, thanks largely to assured half-centuries from Denesh Ramdin and Lendl Simmons and heck of a blitz from Andre Russell, who also went on to pick up three wickets in the second innings.
The reply was not much of a reply from Pakistan really as they tumbled to 1/4 (yup, no typo there), with Taylor wreaking havoc to put the men in green out of the game. In the end, all Pakistan could manage was 160 all out in 39 overs, tumbling to another disappointing defeat, as their World Cup campaign threatens to unravel.
Talk about a dramatic start, it doesn't get more dramatic than this. One run on the board with four wickets back in the hut; anybody coming in to watch form that point would have thought the scoreboard was being shown the Aussie way, instead, it was Jerome Taylor (7-1-15-3) and Jason Holder (7-2-23-1) doing all the damage to put Pakistan out of the game in a hurry.
First to go was Nasir Jamshed, off the second delivery of the innings, with the left-hander, who had been off the field for a huge chunk of the first innings, mistiming a pull shot to Andre Russell at midwicket.
There was then time for Ahmed Shehzad, who had crossed, to take a single off his third ball, before Younis Khan's nightmare World Cup just got that little bit worse as he edged a nicely-delivered full ball from Taylor to wicketkeeper Denesh Ramdin.
Two wickets in the first over was bad enough while chasing 311, but it only got a lot worse for Pakistan. After 11 consecutive dot balls, Taylor had his third Pakistan wicket , with Haris Sohail skewing a wide delivery straight to Jonathan Carter at point.
After Taylor's heroics, it was the turn of Holder to get in on the act, with the skipper inducing an outside edge from Ahmed Shehzad who threw his bat at an outswinger and only managed to nick it to Lendl Simmons at gully.
So, that wicket meant another maiden over, which was the third straight of the innings, with two of them being wicket maidens.
How many times has Misbah-ul-Haq found himself in this position? And yet again all the pressure was on the Pakistan captain to bring back a semblance of reality to this innings.
After about six overs of blocking, a couple of boundaries and singles with Sohaib Maqsood, though, even Misbah fell, edging one off Andre Russell to Chris Gayle, who completed a smart catch in the slips.
At 25/5 it was done and dusted for Pakistan – not that at 1 for four, the lowest ever score in ODIs at the fourth wicket mark, it wasn't – with Umar Akmal (59, 71b, 5x4, 1x6) and Maqsood (50, 66b, 4x4, 1x6) putting on a decent partnership, before the latter also fell.
From there, it was just a matter of when as West Indies zoomed to an impressive, "We are definitely in it to win it" victory.
Earlier, West Indies just lulled Pakistan, sloppy and believing the white balls were bars of soap, into a sense of "OK, so we are going to chase only a score of around 260" before taking off in just the right moments to get that score past the 300 mark.
The match was meandering along at 103/2 in 24 overs after Chris Gayle and Dwayne fell for "not too much to bother about" scores, and Marlon Samuels and Darren Bravo slowly getting those runs moving along.
Samuels (38, 52b, 4x4), after a decent hand, then fell off the first ball of the 25th over, holing out at long-off to Haris Sohail, and that proved to be a blessing in disguise, with Denesh Ramdin coming in and playing a special little innings.
Ramdin provided West Indies that thrust they needed in the middle of the innings, with the wicketkeeper/batsman allying for 49 runs with Bravo in just 7 overs, only for that momentum to be cut short prematurely as Bravo was forced to retire hurt with what looked like a hamstring injury (maybe the left-hander can give Michael Clarke a call or even Arsenal's Aaron Ramsey if he is a Gooner).
Ramdin (51, 43, 7x4) then had to rebuild with Lendl Simmons, and once the former had done his bit with a half-century, it was take off time for the West Indies in the final 10 overs.
From 195/4 in 40 overs, West Indies managed 115 runs in the last 60 balls, with Simmons and Andre Russell, in the final couple of overs, going berserk, all that with Darren Sammy, probably still struggling with injury, not quite finding his range. Russell's 42 in 13 balls was the difference between 310 and 280, with a massive 79 runs coming in just the final five overs of the innings, runs which dented Pakistan's hopes of picking up an opening World Cup 2015 victory.
Get the full scorecard of the match HERE
