Mitchell Marsh has scored a half-century as Australia crushed New Zealand by six wickets in the series-opening men’s T20I.<\/p>\n
Australia’s victory came despite a century from Black Caps batter Tim Robinson at Tauranga’s Bay Oval on Wednesday evening.<\/p>\n
Marsh blasted five sixes and nine fours in his 43-ball 85 as the visitors reeled in New Zealand’s 6-181 with 21 balls to spare in blustery conditions.<\/p>\n
“It’s a nice entry, obviously really important in a three-match series to start off with a win,” Marsh said.<\/p>\n
“Tonight was a lot of fun \u2026we do have a lot of power in our batting line-up [and] hopefully it can continue.”<\/p>\n
In the earliest start to an international summer in New Zealand, the Black Caps were missing regular captain Mitchell Santner, Kane Williamson, Rachin Ravindra and a slew of injured bowlers.<\/p>\n
Kyle Jamieson returned from paternity leave, though, joining Matt Henry, Zakary Foulkes and Jacob Duffy in a pace quartet that was taken apart by Marsh and fellow opener Travis Head (31), and bled 68 runs in the powerplay.<\/p>\n
Henry removed Head and grabbed a second wicket when Marsh smashed straight to Robinson at deep cover.<\/p>\n
But the match was well over by that stage, with number three Matt Short having added 29, and Tim David and Alex Carey combining in a 24-run partnership.<\/p>\n
Recalled all-rounder Marcus Stoinis faced one delivery, pulling Foulkes to the boundary fence for the winning runs.<\/p>\n
Australia was also below strength, with Pat Cummins injured and all-rounder Cameron Green skipping the series to prepare for the Ashes at home.<\/p>\n
It hardly mattered as quicks Josh Hazlewood and Ben Dwarshuis blew away the New Zealand top order with three wickets in the first two overs.<\/p>\n
Robinson, who replaced Ravindra in the New Zealand squad after the batter suffered a facial laceration at training, gave home fans reason to cheer with an unbeaten 106 off 66 balls.<\/p>\n
But Hazlewood (1-23) and leg-spinner Adam Zampa (0-27) otherwise put a chokehold on the batting, ensuring a modest total against Australia’s heavy hitters.<\/p>\n
“In the powerplays in both innings we got a little bit behind the game,” Black Caps stand-in skipper Michael Bracewell said.<\/p>\n
“We did well in the batting unit to be able to put a competitive total on the board.<\/p>\n
“But when Mitch and Travis came out the way they did, they took the game away from us and we were fighting for a bit of momentum after that.”<\/p>\n
The series continues on Friday in Tauranga, before wrapping up on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Reuters\/ABC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mitchell Marsh has scored a half-century as Australia crushed New Zealand by six wickets in the series-opening men’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182360,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,1736,17600,9672,85,37284,23287,116886,4126],"class_list":["post-182359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-new-zealand","tag-scores","tag-series","tag-sports","tag-stats","tag-t20","tag-taurangi","tag-updates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}