STATISTICS: A summary of ODI statistics and milestones following the first match of the series against Zimbabwe.
Doug Bracewell and Rob Nicol became the 165th and 166th players to play for New Zealand in One Day Internationals. Rob Nicol is just the second BLACKCAP, after Martin Guptill, to score a century on debut in New Zealand's 612 match ODI history. He is just the 7th player to do so in 3,208 ODIs overall.
Nicol has now scored centuries in his last three List A innings. He finished last season scoring 119 in the domestic Men's One-Day Final for Canterbury Wizards against Auckland Aces and followed that by scoring 102 as a guest player for Mashonaland Eagles in Zimbabwe prior to his ODI debut.
The 156 added by Brendan Taylor and Forster Mutizwa for the 5th wicket is the highest for Zimbabwe against New Zealand surpassing the 154 run 3rd wicket partnership between Stuart Carlisle and Andy Flower at Taupo in 2001. That partnership helped Zimbabwe to their biggest win over New Zealand by 70 runs.
They weren't so successful on this occasion as New Zealand equalled their second largest winning margin against Zimbabwe when batting second. New Zealand previously won by 9 wickets at Napier in 1998 with Nathan Astle scoring 104* in New Zealand's 211-1 and adding 147 for the 1st wicket with Llorne Howell. New Zealand's largest winning margin came in their last ODI against Zimbabwe at the World Cup in March this year when Brendan McCullum and Martin Guptill added 166 to close out Zimbabwe by 10 wickets.
New Zealand opening combinations have now scored 7 century stands in 30 ODIs, going on to pass 150 on 4 of those occasions (including this match) with Lou Vincent and Stephen Fleming adding a New Zealand record against Zimbabwe of 204 at Bulawayo in 2005.
The Brendon McCullum/Martin Guptill opening pairing added 413 runs in all international matches against Zimbabwe before being separated. They added 166 in the World Cup as mentioned above before scoring 127 unbeaten in the 1st Twenty20 international of this tour followed by another 120 in the 2nd match before they were finally parted.
The four catches Brendon McCullum took equalled his record for New Zealand in matches against Zimbabwe. He previously took 3 catches and made one stumping at Harare in 2005.
Brendon and Doug Bracewell become the third father-son combination to have played ODIs for New Zealand after Lance and Chris Cairns and Rodney and Aaron Redmond.
