Kiwis’ top-order must click to ease pressure on ‘free-scoring’ Taylor: Lance Cairns

AUCKLAND - Former New Zealand all-rounder Lance Cairns has said that the Black Caps’ top-order batsmen must deliver to take the pressure off star batsman Ross Taylor in the middle-order.

Taylor has not scored an ODI century in over two years and there has been comment that he needs to lift his act.

“I think the pressure he is putting on himself doesn’t help because every time he comes in we are three down for spit,” Stuff.co.nz quoted Cairns, as saying.

“So can he play his natural game? No, he can’t. He’s such a free-scoring guy. He loves to play his shots. To see him come out and try to block and hold the innings together, that’s not his natural game.”

“We are not getting off to [good] starts,” he added.

Cairns further said that it was frustrating to watch the national side at times, because the team was relying on the lower-order players to bail them out in one-day games.

“Too often we’ve got guys in there that can score a hundred, then in the next 10 or 20 innings they’ll do nothing,” the former all-rounder said.

“Relying on seven, eight and nine, that’s not the right way to play limited-overs cricket,” he added.

New Zealand lost their fourth one-day against India in Bangalore by five-wickets, which saw the tourists going down 0-4 in the series.

It was New Zealand’s tenth successive loss from completed matches, their last win coming in the first match of that Sri Lanka tri-series, against India, on August 10.

They were earlier beaten 0-4 in a five-match ODI series by Bangladesh in October. (ANI)