Southee: New Zealand were 'one ball away from series victory'

There was but one member of this New Zealand squad on tour in Pakistan to have ever played cricket in the country, and that was their batting coach. Even so, they were "one ball away from series victory" and the captain Tim Southee took a lot of heart from that.Karachi provided conditions that made batting and bowling a hard graft, so much so that both Test matches only really came alive on the final day. Last week, an odd declaration from Babar Azam gave New Zealand the chance to nick a win after it seemed like they had been batted out of the game. And on Friday, they had Pakistan at 80 for 5 in a chase of 319. They weathered Sarfaraz Ahmed's brilliant counterattack. And in the dying light, became the only team with any chance of victory."You play to win Test matches and we got ourselves in, probably, positions to win both of them," Southee said at the post-match press conference. "It was pretty tough going but the guys toiled away and we were one ball away from a series victory. So yeah, disappointing to walk away [0-0] and I'm sure Pakistan are the same. You walk away, you toil away for 10 days and a drawn series. So yeah. A lot of good cricket was played in and amongst those 10 days."Southee: 'Surfaces were tough to score runs on' When the umpires had to take the players off the field for bad light, New Zealand were one wicket away from victory, and Pakistan needed just 15 runs. Southee, captaining for the first time in Test cricket in this series, was asked whether he had any regrets about the timing of his declaration. He gave his team 93 overs to take 10 wickets. They got in 90, and took nine, before the game was called off."We felt the surfaces was still a pretty good surface if you wanted to just bat," Southee said. "Tough if you wanted to score runs. So it was a bit of a balancing act to try and get the right amount of overs left and the right amount of runs. And I guess to get a little dip at them [2.5 overs] last night and get them two down, that was a great start."I guess you always look back and the