India won the toss and elected to bat in the first test against New Zealand in Kanpur starting Thursday.
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The 24-year-old hit four boundaries, and a six off Santner, before getting a faint edge to wicketkeeper BJ Watling in the left-arm spinner’s second over.
The batsmen brought up their individual fifties in successive overs, but not before Latham had survived a scare.
Mark Craig added India in further turmoil dismissing Ajinkya Rahane on 18 just after tea. Extras: (b5, lb1) 6.
India had built a promising score of 154-1, but thereafter the patient bowling of Trent Boult (3-57) and Mitchell Santner (3-77) impressed and inspired a fightback. Indian skipper’s batting average in Tests against Wagner is 14.66.
Vijay, who notched up a useful innings of 65, reckoned that India already have a substantial total on the board and that there is enough assistance for the spinners to make inroads into the New Zealand line-up on the second day.
On Friday, while struggling for a breakthrough, he gave the ball to opener Murali Vijay, who bowls off-spin. “It’s a lesson learnt and hopefully we can put up a better show in the second innings”.
“As a three I think we can be reasonably happy with our performance”, he said.
“It was pretty flat to start with, a pretty good batting surface and they did bat well”.
According to regulations, parts of protective gears must not come into play while taking a catch. Neil Wagner, Mark Craig and Ish Sodhi picked one wicket each.
Santner, who had earlier accounted for KL Rahul’s (32) wicket, chipped in with one more, forcing Pujara to play at a ball aimed at his pads, resulting in an easy caught and bowled.
That prompted a collapse, as skipper Virat Kohli fell for nine and Vijay followed soon after.
After luncheon, Vijay and Pujara looked comfortable at the crease to cross the century stand. Incidentally, in the first Test at Green Park between these two teams, as many as seven India batsmen had got scores between 30 and 69 in 1976, with India ending up on 524 on that occasion.
“The wicket is on the slower side and we have plans (against their batsmen) too”, Vijay said. After the wicket of Rohit, only R Ashwin provide resistance and played positive cricket. What we have got to do now is go there and put pressure on them.
Mitchell Santner, who picked 3-77, said if bowled in the right areas, run-scoring can become hard. Vijay extracted some turn but bowled only one over. They had a plan.
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“The way they rotated the strike, their left hand-right hand combination throughout the partnership was crucial”.
