HAMILTON, Dec 23: New Zealand captain Stephen Fleming said his team lacked “mental focus” when batting on fifth day of first Test against Pakistan on Tuesday.

But Black Caps suffered a horrendous batting collapse and were 96 for eight wickets when rains killed off the match.

Afterwards Fleming said he was disappointed with how it had gone on the final day and that batsmen had “wrong mental” attitude for the challenge.

“It was a disaster really,” Fleming said. “It was a tough afternoon, we knew we couldn’t win the match, Pakistan were the only side that could win once the rain to time out of the game.

“They had nothing to lose and we played like a nervous team that knew there was nothing in it.”

When play finished on Monday New Zealand had a lead of 104 runs with all their second innings wickets intact and Fleming was looking to knock out some quick runs on Tuesday morning and then try to bowl Pakistan out. But bad weather that has plagued this Test destroyed any chance of that.

“We left (Monday night) looking at how to use 105 overs to win the match and that was our focus until we woke us this morning and saw time had been taken out of the game,” the skipper said.

“That’s when I knew the only result we could get is a draw and with that comes a shift in mindset and Pakistan bowled very well, when they get a sniff they’re a tough side.”

Player of the day was Mohammad Sami who took five wickets as he regularly broke 150km mark with his deliveries and it now looks like Pakistan will go into second Test with a fit Shoaib Akhtar and a confident Sami, which is something Fleming didn’t want.

“We’ve conceded something to Sami because he hadn’t had a flash match up until today,” he said. “He’d been poor in first innings where he’d gone for over a 100.

“He batted reasonably well yesterday, but today he showed that he’s a quality bowler.

“We know he is a good bowler, so if we could have kept his confidence down they may have contemplated not even playing him in next Test.”

Asked what he thought were positives to take out of this drawn Test, Fleming said it was a good start to New Zealand summer of cricket and it was also a good Test for Daryl Tuffey who picked up five wickets with the ball.

“Being sent in and scoring 563 is a good start to the series,” he said. “I thought our bowlers toiled well, Daryl Tuffey continued to impress and we’ve got into groove of playing Test cricket.

“Today was a bit unusual in that we had to work mentally a lot tougher than what we did for other four days because you’re not sure how much time is going to be left in the match,” he added.—PPI