timeTo be clear, this doesn’t happen very often. In the fourth innings of the Christchurch Test match, Australia needed 279 runs to win. The Australian Test team has a history of 147 years. Before Monday, they had chased bigger targets 13 times. The total is now up to 14 innings, and after an innings that probably went wrong many times, did go wrong on 3 different outbursts, it finally got it right calmly and cautiously.
One of the former baker’s dozen victories came at Edgbaston last year. Late on the fifth day, in a somber atmosphere, bowling captain Pat Cummins batted at No. 8, finishing with 44 not out, hitting a two-wicket winning run to reach 282 points goal. On the fourth day, Cummins batted at No. 9 and ended up with 32 not out, hitting the winning boundary to take the score to 281. The history is almost verbatim.
This shouldn’t happen at all. On the third night, New Zealand’s opening fast forward of Matt Henry and Ben Sears has become an irresistible wave: vicious seams LBW and burnt reviews, missed catches, two balls behind the bowler Seizing the lead, the delivery was followed by a slip catch trying to leave with some stumps strewn across his face. Steve Smith, Marnus Labuschagne, Usman Khawaja and Cameron Green all played with 34 points. None of those big chases before had been successful in so little time with four wickets.
Travis Head and Mitchell Marsh put on a quick 43 through the stumps but Head was sidelined for the second session of the day and after Marsh also did After making the same move, he scored a goal. Five strikes, 199 gained. No batting team should win the game from there. Much less one relying on a counterattacking all-rounder whose recent nine-month renaissance only this day dragged his career batting average above 30, and a wicketkeeper-bat whose primary job has consistently been met but whose second task has recently left him looking in serious uncomfortable.
However, that’s how it happened, Marsh found the boundary more often than any other by evading the sliding cordon but collected his runs wisely in the middle while Carey drove out early through cover and looked Immediately it was easier than it had been in months and continued to lead the partnership as its target hit triple figures and the number of runs required dropped to double.
With 86 runs remaining, the game looked over when the batsmen bowled Henry for 16 runs. New Zealand’s best bowler looked exhausted by his efforts so far: nine wickets in the match briefly reached before LBW’s decision against Carey was overturned by the review system 10. Sears did buck the trend, though, bowling a veritable full ball that burned past Marsh’s bat and found pads in front before Mitchell Starc It’s spliced to the shorter ball at square leg.
Two for two and the defense racked up 59 runs, Cummins pushed the next ball in before slipping through the cordon for four runs. A hat-trick on debut, a rare win over Australia? It will benefit Sears for life. Like trying to shake off a night’s sleep, dreams are only an arm’s length away.
Soon there was a full awakening and Cummins finished with aplomb from that ball onwards while Carey batted to reach 98 not out. While this is something to celebrate in Australia, it is a disaster for New Zealand. There have been eight Test wins against Australia since 1946, only one in the last 13 years against a strong team, and no win on New Zealand soil in 31 years, despite some superb The chance had slipped away, but the victory was as clear-cut as any.
Spinner Glenn Phillips, who tied the knot with Marsh during the World Cup and dismissed Carey in the first innings in Christchurch, Australia, did not get the chance until the two It is only used in the last game after all exceed 50 points. Scott Kuggeleijn squandered a spot, highlighted by conceding ten extra goals from a nominal virgin, and that doesn’t even take into account the team’s reputation for drafting a player with his personal history in morally compromised. Tim Southee created two chances, from a poor shot to two poor passes.
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Everything was left to Sears and Henry, with Sears having a good but understandably underwhelming debut, and Henry dragging the team back into the competition by blowing all their tickets in the first three days. . Fatigue is entirely fair for a man who emerged as man of the series in a whitewash defeat, an achievement perhaps only shared by Brian Lara during his 2001 tour of Sri Lanka.
Ahead of this Test, the surviving players from New Zealand’s first Test win over Australia in 1974 held a 50th anniversary reunion. Henry deserves an invitation to a similar event in 2074. But that was not to be and Henry, 32, was not invited into the Aussie squad. With another visit unlikely until at least 2028, the chances of him returning home again are slim.
The last decisive moment of New Zealand’s current home game against Australia was when Merv Hughes bowled to New Zealand goalkeeper Tony Blain. Nothing highlights the depth of the problem more than this. Supporters are fed up and the upbeat talk from some players after this defeat did little to alleviate the situation. Australia won against all odds and can revel in it. To be honest, New Zealand also got over the hump of failure.
