Astle the matchwinner

His dodgy knee notwithstanding, Nathan Astle is still one of the key members of the New Zealand batting line-up. Nearly 11 years after he began his international career, against West Indies at Auckland, Astle will walk out in New Zealand colours for the 200th time when his team takes on South Africa in the fourth one-dayer of the five-match series at Durban. His debut game was a reasonable one - coming in at No.6, he hammered 25 from 23 balls, but then leaked 27 in three overs in a game New Zealand eventually lost - but since then, Astle has firmly established himself as one of the backbone of his team.

Only the fourth New Zealander to get to 200 ODIs (after Chris Harris, Stephen Fleming and Chris Cairns), Astle's tally of 6369 runs is second only to Fleming's 6948 among the top run-getters for New Zealand. And as his career summary indicates, Astle has favoured the bowling attacks of Zimbabwe, England and India, but he has struggled against South Africa, against whom he has managed just one century in 28 games. The Durban game offers him an opportunity to partly correct this discrepancy. Interestingly, Astle's stats against the minnows is a mixed bag - against Bangladesh, Canada, Netherlands, Scotland and UAE, he has scored a sum total of 116 runs in nine innings for a ridiculously low average of 12.89. Against Zimbabwe and US, though, he has amassed 1134 runs at 59.68.

More than anything else, Astle has been a matchwinner for New Zealand: he averages 55.46 in victories, and just 21.60 in defeats. (Fleming's average in wins is only 42.30.) Thirteen of Astle's 15 centuries have led to victories. The last team to feel the heat of his powerful drives and square-cuts was India, against whom he blasted an unbeaten 115 to help New Zealand make light of a relatively tough target of 277 in the Videocon Cup final at Harare earlier this year. In fact, the last four of Astle's hundreds have all been unbeaten ones, three of them in run-chases, suggesting a willingness to take on responsibility to see the team through once he gets a start. But while Astle's destructive ability has never been in doubt, his consistency has often been found wanting: on ten occasions, he has followed his century with a sub-20 score, of which seven have been single-digit ones.

And as if scoring all those runs wasn't enough, Astle has also been a handy contributor with the ball, with 96 wickets at a reasonable average and a very good economy rate of 4.68. (Click here for his career summary as a bowler.) In fact, his record when bowling in the second innings of a match would do a specialist bowler proud - an average of 29.73 and an economy rate of 4.54.