Payne spearheads 83-run New Zealand win over India

New Zealand recovered from their disappointing batting performance against Australia on Sunday to give the record books a rewrite in their match with India in the World Series of Women's Cricket at Bert Sutcliffe Oval at Lincoln University today.

Opening batsman Nicola Payne started the trend when achieving the best score of her 63-match One-Day International career. She scored 93 off 130 balls to help New Zealand to a record score against India of 248 for five wickets.

Her effort was deserving of a century but after 47-over stay at the crease she succumbed to leg cramps and was unable to avoid being run out as she and Haidee Tiffen were putting intense pressure on what had been a game Indian fielding effort.

Payne's 93 bettered the highest score by a New Zealand player against India which was 89 jointly held by Janette Dunning at Jamshedpur in 1984/85 and Anna O'Leary at Lincoln during the CricInfo Women's World Cup in 2000.

New Zealand's total was also its highest against India, surpassing the 224 for five wickets scored at Lincoln in 2000.

When Payne was out, New Zealand were in the strong position of 222 for four wickets. She had shared an 87-run partnership for the fourth wicket with Tiffen.

Tiffen scored her fifth half century soon after, off 47 balls, including six fours. However, she was out in the next over when undone by a slower ball from Jhulan Goswami and bowled for 52 with New Zealand 230 for five wickets.

Payne, who had played 37 ODIs for the Netherlands, was playing her 26th game for New Zealand. Her previous highest score for New Zealand was 60 scored against Ireland on last year's tour to Britain and Europe while her highest for the Netherlands was 73 not out against Denmark in a match at Husum in Germany in 1997.

Payne, Canadian-born but whose parents live in the Netherlands, and who first came to New Zealand to live in the 1994/95 season where she has been a club coach in Christchurch with the St Albans club, said she had been "a little bit more relaxed" in her batting this year, largely the result of accumulated experience more than anything else.

She said that the plan she and opening partner Rebecca Rolls used was to do nothing too fancy and just get the side away to a good start. She said one of her main roles as an opener was to feed Rolls the strike as often as possible and then pull her back a bit when she gets wound up. They like to score 60 or 70 in the first 15 overs.

Payne said she had been having problems getting stuck in the 30s in her previous international innings and it was good to get such a good score. While it would have been nice to get a century, the team situation of scoring 240-250 was the main goal and that had been more important.

She said captain Emily Drumm had said to her during her stay at the crease to go on and get a big one today.

Payne hadn't been counting off the various milestones as they came along.

"I'm not that good on numbers. But the last 10 overs went exactly to the plan we had, it was just that it is usually Tiffen and [Sara] McGlashan who are putting the pressure on the field at the end. There was a change in the wind at one stage of the innings and when the nor'wester came in there was one really hot spell," she said.

Earlier, Payne had shared a 79-run opening stand with Rolls who was dismissed for 38 runs, and after Payne's dismissal Tiffen was out for her fifth half century, 52, and it was left to Maia Lewis who finished 17 not out and McGlashan who was five not out in a high risk stand that allowed New Zealand to go to lunch on 248 for five wickets.

India showed batting defiance by only losing five wickets during their innings but it was at the cost of haste in their run scoring. Jaya Sharma (37) and Sunetra Paranjpe (41) scoring 75 in their opening stand. But India couldn't lift the pace of their scoring and at the 37 over mark the requirement was already over 10 runs.

The match had been interesting because the Indian openers had provided their side with a good start and with such good batsmen in their team they were capable of doing what New Zealand did, but when the time came to put the foot on the accelerator, the Indians had proved incapable of making the adjustment.

The New Zealand bowlers had been generally inexpensive but they did concede 21 wides with Nicola Browne taking one for 21 off 10 overs and conceding seven wides while debutant left-arm spinner Rebecca Steele conceded 21 runs off her 10 overs but with no wides.