Tight bowling from Jacob Duffy set the tone, taking two wickets for seven runs in a spell of four overs. The removal of food-poisoned casualty Shai Hope proved key, after he tottered to the wicket on recovering legs. A miscued top-edge hook to Zak Foulkes at fine leg sorted that problem.<\/p>\n
A second objective was to accelerate the cause.<\/p>\n
Tick.<\/p>\n
Tom Latham and Devon Conway, with the support cast of Rachin Ravindra and an ambidextrous Kane Williamson, batted unselfishly. They reached 306 for two in 54 overs at a run-rate of 5.66, a one-day international-like blueprint.<\/p>\n
Conway and Latham might have become the sixth and seventh of their compatriots to score centuries in both innings of a test, but did so without compromising the direction of the team.<\/p>\n
A third goal was to give themselves 16 overs, effectively an hour or so, to attack with the ball before stumps and presumably grab a couple of wickets.<\/p>\n
Cross, because no wickets were taken at 43 without loss.<\/p>\n
The fact the tired visitors are chasing 462 offered a plumped cushion for the hosts\u2019 bowlers to fall back on, and a night\u2019s sleep will enhance their chances. Balls have a Whack-A-Mole quality to them at times as they get harder to hit with the variable bounce.<\/p>\n
Ajaz Patel and Glenn Phillips now have an opportunity on refreshed legs to earn their keep in the XI by spinning the ball out of the burgeoning rough.<\/p>\n
Patel, after earning his first wickets at home with figures of three for 113 from 41 overs, looks the most potent of the pair, especially ripping deliveries from the City End.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s also worth noting is that a fourth pitch in six at Bay Oval tests has gone the five-day distance. The surface has probably offered more for bat than ball with just 20 wickets taken in four days, but both teams have had a fair crack on a true surface which is deteriorating at an appropriate juncture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tight bowling from Jacob Duffy set the tone, taking two wickets for seven runs in a spell of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":194601,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[9331,9092,1561,3390,7022,42574,3381,16558,25091,5821,68923,5904,78,28523,17707,13233,117,111,43,139,69,2114,1532,120680,61492,29545,765,165,3755,61,8982,3807,80,2963],"class_list":["post-194600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-chance","tag-against","tag-bay","tag-best","tag-black","tag-caps","tag-complete","tag-cricket","tag-effectively","tag-everything","tag-favour","tag-final","tag-in","tag-indies","tag-maunganui","tag-mount","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-opinion","tag-oval","tag-percentages","tag-played","tag-present","tag-test","tag-their","tag-third","tag-to","tag-victory","tag-west","tag-zealand","tag-zealands"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194600","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=194600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}