The New Zealand national cricket team toured Pakistan during the 1996–97 cricket season. The tour consisted of a first-class game against an invitational Pakistani Cricket board XI, followed by two Test matches and three One Day International games. The hosts and tourists shared honours in the Test series, drawing 1–1, though New Zealand won with only a narrow 44-run margin in the first Test, and lost the second by an innings and ten runs. New Zealand's Stephen Fleming enjoyed a successful series with the bat, scoring 182 runs at 60.66 in the Test series and 172 runs at 86.00 in the ODI matches, though the rest of the New Zealand batting line-up were said by the New Zealand press to have let the side down with the bat during the Test matches. Nathan Astle, questioned over his place during