In a contrasting passage of play in the morning session of Day 3, New Zealand made a watchful start to their second essay after getting bundled out for 209 in the first, on Sunday. The hosts went to Lunch on 40 for no loss at the Basin Reserve in Wellington.
Earlier in the day, resuming the innings on 138 for 7, New Zealand went on the offensive courtesy Tim Southee’s counter attack, a method that had served the New Zealand vice captain fairly well on Day 2. After having smacked Stuart Broad for a couple of sixes last evening, he took down Jack Leach on Sunday morning.
However, the shot-making quickly changed from crisp drives to over-the-top swipes. Southee went down the ground thrice against Leach in the 47th over, and successfully managed to clear the boundary ropes each time. Soon, Southee continued that attack even against the other bowlers. He took on a short delivery by Ollie Robinson and hooked the pacer for a six, and in the next over he decided to go after Broad again.
After hitting the pacer for a boundary and then getting dropped by Leach at fine leg, his entertaining innings of 49-ball 73 finally came to an end. Attempting to flick the pacer over mid wicket, he failed to get the connection and was caught by Zak Crawley.
Broad soon added two more wickets to his tally. Blundell, looking to go down the track to a half-tracker, mistimed the shot and hit it to the fielder at mid on. In Broad’s next over, Matt Henry got a leading edge to gully as Broad finished with a 4-fer and New Zealand fell 226 runs short of England’s first innings score.
Asked to follow on, New Zealand’s opening pair – Devon Conway and Tom Latham – were severely tested with the ball zipping around quite a bit. While Latham looked assured with his technique, Conway was regularly troubled by the new-ball pair of Anderson and Robinson. The opener was regularly beaten on the inside and the outside edge but managed to hang in till the Lunch break, adding an unbeaten 40-run stand for the opening wicket.
Brief Scores:England 435/8 decl. (Harry Brook 186, Joe Root 153*; Matt Henry 4-100, Michael Bracewell 2-54) lead New Zealand 209 (Tim Southee 73, Tom Blundell 38; Stuart Broad 4-61, James Anderson 3-37) & 40/0 (Tom Latham 27*) by 186 runs
