form he showed at Lord\u2019s<\/a> to make 53 from 114 balls, and added 74 runs with his captain. Like the Black Caps 24 hours earlier, though, England\u2019s top order gave their wickets away after making starts.<\/p>\nDebutant Jordan Cox (22 not out) will carry England\u2019s hopes into day three, joined by Archer \u2013 batting at No 8 as part of an exceptionally long tail for the hosts \u2013 hoping to reduce the deficit by as much as possible before the Black Caps bat again.<\/p>\n
Resuming at 291-7, Phillips needed just two balls to reach 50, as he and Jamieson added 27 in the first three overs to push the score beyond 300. Jamieson played his part, despite being hit on the head twice, but was an exceptional foil for Phillips, as the pair reached their 50-stand in just 52 balls.<\/p>\n
Even after losing Jamieson, Phillips passed his highest test score, before a top-edged pull took him into the 90s. When Root returned to Archer in search of the breakthrough, Phillips showed no nerves to reach triple figures, and only perished in the push for quick runs as the last man to fall.<\/p>\n
However, the tricky wicket that greeted the Black Caps on day one had begun to flatten out, as England\u2019s openers responded with 45 at close to a run a ball either side of the break.<\/p>\n
Ben Duckett raced to 36 off 25 balls, but was sold up the river by Gay, and run out by Smith attempting to steal a single. New Zealand struck just once more in the afternoon when Smith had Bethell (9) caught behind by Blundell at 68-2, but Gay and Root saw the hosts to tea without further loss.<\/p>\n
Gay fell two balls after reaching his half-century when a brutal ball from O\u2019Rourke took the edge to Blundell, only given out after captain Tom Latham smartly reviewed, after minimal appeal from the Black Caps. <\/p>\n
And after being limited at Lord\u2019s, Henry asserted himself as the leader of New Zealand\u2019s attack by ripping the heart out of England\u2019s batting line-up to expose an inexperienced middle order. <\/p>\n
![\"Matt]()
Matt Henry celebrates the wicket of England captain Joe Root at The Oval. Photo \/ Photosport<\/p>\n
As Root closed in on 50 and 14,000 test runs, England\u2019s stand-in skipper was pinned LBW by a Henry nip-backer for 46, before Brook suffered the same fate one over later. Root was stuck going forward to a ball he should have gone back to, while Brook did the opposite, as 142-2 became 177-5.<\/p>\n
Both batting in test cricket for the first time, the sixth wicket pair of James Rew (24) and Cox at the very least saw England avoid the follow-on, and pass 200 before the end of play.<\/p>\n
Rew was given a life on 23 when he was dropped by Ravindra at fine leg off O\u2019Rourke, but only added one more to his total before giving a similar chance to Daryl Mitchell at slip.<\/p>\n
New Zealand 391 (Phillips 100; Bethell 3-26)<\/p>\n
England 222-6 (Gay 53; Henry 2-57)<\/p>\n
New Zealand lead by 169 runs<\/p>\n
Alex Powell<\/a> is a sports journalist for the NZ Herald. He has been a sports journalist since 2016.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Henry was supported by the enforcer-like Will O\u2019Rourke (2-61), who made excellent use of the short ball for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":484140,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[243059,9092,243058,1975,7022,74281,42574,15364,1634,14154,21934,6540,305,28162,7240,41722,117,111,139,69,1532,10936,8466,213,243060,19554,765,223,1237,25448,80],"class_list":["post-484139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-169run","tag-against","tag-ascendancy","tag-at","tag-black","tag-bowlers","tag-caps","tag-century","tag-england","tag-give","tag-glenn","tag-hand","tag-have","tag-hold","tag-lead","tag-maiden","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-oval","tag-phillips","tag-second","tag-sports","tag-stumps","tag-taken","tag-test","tag-the","tag-two","tag-upper","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484139","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=484139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/484140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}