The 32-year-old right-hander immediately brightened a gloomy Hagley Oval by striding to the crease sporting iridescent sunglasses under his helmet.<\/p>\n
The entrance generated mirth in the media box, sparking memories of the perpetually shaded Chris Gayle and his Caribbean swagger.<\/p>\n
The laughs petered out when Hope started receiving regular eye drops in response to an infection picked up yesterday.<\/p>\n
The measure of his toil started to dawn. Hope sprang eternal, or at least for 107 deliveries, against the Black Caps\u2019 barrage.<\/p>\n
The gutsy showing ended when Jacob Duffy persuaded a ball to kiss his glove down the leg side. Hope\u2019s disappointment \u2013 and passion \u2013 could be gauged by a traipse to the pavilion that rivalled the Channel Nine duck of yesteryear.<\/p>\n
He came to the crease with the scoreboard in a parlous state at 10-2 in the 11th over after John Campbell and Alick Athanaze offered scant resistance.<\/p>\n
The right-hander, in combination with the left-handed Tagenarine Chanderpaul, put on 90 runs from 201 balls of patient concentration for the most part.<\/p>\n
He backed up from 103 off 214 balls against India at Delhi in October.<\/p>\n
Hope\u2019s test average of 25.37, heading into his 44th cap, belied a robust technique as his opponents tried to break through.<\/p>\n
He looked vulnerable tucked up against short-of-a-length queries, but demonstrated aplomb driving off the front foot. The No 4 was watchful, playing late under his eyes.<\/p>\n
Hope also answered a wealth of questions from the New Zealand quicks on or outside off stump early. This was not the Ashes\u2019 first test. He was prepared to allow a stockpile of dots to mount in the interests of a pragmatic team cause. The test will subsequently advance to a third day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 32-year-old right-hander immediately brightened a gloomy Hagley Oval by striding to the crease sporting iridescent sunglasses under…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":165767,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[107439,20251,7430,7022,42574,107438,2883,221,28523,117,111,43,139,69,2114,1532,108306,418,108305,61,3807,80],"class_list":{"0":"post-165766","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-alderson","9":"tag-andrew","10":"tag-bat","11":"tag-black","12":"tag-caps","13":"tag-hagley","14":"tag-hope","15":"tag-how","16":"tag-indies","17":"tag-new","18":"tag-new-zealand","19":"tag-news","20":"tag-newzealand","21":"tag-nz","22":"tag-opinion","23":"tag-oval","24":"tag-shai","25":"tag-shows","26":"tag-sunglasswearing","27":"tag-to","28":"tag-west","29":"tag-zealand"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165766\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}