Ireland trail a dominant New Zealand by 246 runs with eight wickets remaining after day two of the Test at Stormont.<\/p>\n
After beginning the day on 361-5, New Zealand extended their first-innings total to 490-8 declared, with Tom Blundell producing an outstanding 186 and Dean Foxcroft narrowly missing out on a century on debut with 98.<\/p>\n
While conditions became increasingly batter-friendly, Ireland continued to fight for breakthroughs.<\/p>\n
The hosts then faced a challenging task with the bat against a disciplined New Zealand seam attack under cloudy Belfast skies.<\/p>\n
Ireland’s innings got off to the worst possible start as Nathan Smith struck twice in the opening over to remove Stephen Doheny and Cade Carmichael.<\/p>\n
From there, the home side were forced onto the back foot, with regular wickets halting any chance of momentum developing.<\/p>\n
Despite the difficult circumstances, there were positives for Ireland in the lower order.<\/p>\n
Mark Adair once again showed his value as an all-rounder with a determined counter-attacking innings of 40, refusing to let New Zealand completely dominate proceedings.<\/p>\n
He shared a valuable 116-run partnership with Andy McBrine that frustrated the visitors and briefly lifted the Stormont crowd. McBrine also showed composure and his usual resistance during a stubborn stand as he finished unbeaten on 73.<\/p>\n
New Zealand swiftly enforced the follow-on and sent Ireland back out to bat in the last session of the day.<\/p>\n
Ireland’s opening batters Balbirnie and Doheny got things moving with some boundary fours as they looked to start well in their second innings. The day finished with Ireland on 61-2, Stephen Doheny with a decent start of 36 with seven fours.<\/p>\n
The hosts will hope to produce a fighting response on Day 3 to extend this match as far as possible \u2013 with unfavourable weather reports on Saturday, Ireland will know that to take the match into Day 4 could work in their favour as they look to rescue the game and avoid defeat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland trail a dominant New Zealand by 246 runs with eight wickets remaining after day two of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":609495,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-609494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=609494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609494\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/609495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=609494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=609494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=609494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}