LONDON (AP) \u2014 Emilio Gay with 48 was leading England’s 118-2 reply to New Zealand’s 391 at tea on day two of The Oval test on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Gay ran out his opening partner Ben Duckett and held his head in his hands, but left it behind quickly.<\/p>\n
He and stand-in captain Joe Root, on 19 not out, confidently combined for 50 runs from 10.2 overs to the interval with the floodlights on under leaden skies.<\/p>\n
Duckett dominated in muggy conditions after lunch, when England resumed on 15 without loss. Duckett was steadfast and fluid, reaching 36 off 25 balls.<\/p>\n
More than 20 minutes into the session, Gay was keen to get his first run in the session when he dropped the ball into the off side and called for a tight run. But Nathan Smith was faster than Duckett and side-armed a throw on the run into a direct hit.<\/p>\n
Proving he wasn’t flustered, Gay judged length well, left the ball well, and picked his shots, especially against dangerous New Zealand quicks Will O’Rourke and Smith.<\/p>\n
Jacob Bethell came in and was settling when he tried to defend Smith and gave a thick edge behind on 9 at 68-2.<\/p>\n
Gay had a match-best 57 on debut in the win at Lord’s and was closing in on consecutive half-centuries in a 92-ball innings so far beside the busy Root.<\/p>\n
New Zealand was all out just before lunch after Glenn Phillips scored an even 100, his maiden test century.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON (AP) \u2014 Emilio Gay with 48 was leading England’s 118-2 reply to New Zealand’s 391 at tea…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":744801,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,20341,740,346234,1208,358484,192330,38709,17066,45886,1736,146000,146002,145996,145998,85,346233],"class_list":["post-744800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-ben-duckett","tag-cricket","tag-emilio-gay","tag-england","tag-england-newzealand-oval-test-day-two","tag-glenn-phillips","tag-jacob-bethell","tag-joe-root","tag-nathan-smith","tag-new-zealand","tag-package-100024-ap-online","tag-package-100502-member-choice-sports-option","tag-product-30599-ap-sports-news-s-wire-only","tag-product-32562-ap-online-other-sports-news","tag-sports","tag-will-orourke"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744800","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=744800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744800\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/744801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=744800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=744800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=744800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}