McCullum, the flying wrecking ball

When Tillakaratne Dilshan sent a ball to fine leg in the third over of Sri Lanka's innings, Matt Henry moved quickly and dove to his right to deflect the ball from the ropes. But, he hadn't quite deflected it well enough. As his body was barrel-rolling across the boundary, the ball moved again towards the rope, several metres in front of him. Henry rose again, stumbled forward, and put in another dive. This time, he managed to slap the ball well away from the boundary. All of this to save a run.

A lot of people were left nervous when Brendon McCullum sped towards the rope and dived head-first to prevent boundaries, during the World Cup. The worry was that he would crash so hard into the hoardings, he could do himself an injury. Having tweaked his back before today's match, the impact from a diving save by the ropes at square leg did force him to leave and stay off the field on Monday. He hunted down the ball to save the run, but then rolled with some force into an electronic advertisement board. He got up gingerly and left the field soon after.

Martin Guptill's game is at its peak when he hits powerfully and cleanly through the line of the ball. His shot to Nuwan Kulasekara's first ball should have set off alarms in the Sri Lanka camp. Spotting a slightly overpitched delivery on middle stump, Guptill swung straight through the line, keeping his head over the ball and his eyes on the point of impact even long after the ball had traveled towards the embankment beyond long on. He would power onto hit eight supremely-timed sixes in his unbeaten 30-ball 93.

When New Zealand struck the ball cleanly, it often ended up in the crowd, but Sri Lanka's clean strikes tended to find the hands of the fielders. Danushka Gunathilaka met that fate in the eighth over, when he flayed an overpitched Henry delivery towards cover. The ball flew high to the left of Mitchell Santner. But, the fielder tracked it in an instant, and leapt into the air, kicking heels up and all, to pluck the catch with both hands, fully outstretched.