Latham, Williamson put Indians on backfoot (Lead Tea)

Kanpur, Sep 23 (IANS) Tom Latham and Kane Williamson struck half-centuries to take New Zealand to a comfortable position at tea on the second day of the first cricket Test at the Green Park Stadium here on Friday.

Latham (56 batting) and Williamson (66 batting) came together following the early dismissal of the dangerous Martin Guptill to take the visitors to 152/1 when tea was called.

Latham has hit five boundaries so far during his patient 137-ball stay in the middle while Williamson has managed to find the ropes seven times in his 115-ball knock.

New Zealand now trail the hosts by 166 runs with nine wickets remaining.

Fast bowler Umesh Yadav was the only Indian to bag a wicket, trapping Guptill leg before for figures of 1/22.

Rain played spoilsport just as the players were about to leave the field for tea with a steady drizzle forcing the groundsmen to bring the covers out.

The resumption of play was subsequently postponed for an indefinite period.

With the pitch beginning to show signs of wear and tear, the Indian bowlers got a fair amount of turn and movement off the wicket.

But despite the challenging conditions, the New Zealand batsmen still managed to maintain a decent scoring rate.

Except for Yadav, the rest of the Indian bowlers, including Mohammed Shami (0/26), Ravindra Jadeja (0/47), Ravichandran Ashwin (0/44) and Murali Vijay (0/5), were unable to bag a wicket although there were quite a few close calls.

The visitors suffered their first blow in the 10th over with Guptill, who seemed to be in good form, beaten by an in-swinger from Yadav.

The ball moved very slightly after pitching around the off-stump before hitting Guptill's pads in plumb in front of the middle stump.

Guptill smashed three boundaries during his 31-ball knock.

Williamson then joined Latham in the middle and the duo ensured that the visitors lost no more wickets before lunch.

The duo continued to bat on steadily after lunch, finding the boundaries at regular intervals.

Ashwin bowled quite well, getting the ball to loop and dip in the air. He came close to bagging a wicket on a few occasions, most notably when Williamson was beaten by the vicious turn and the ball hit the back of his helmet. One of the helmet flaps came off and hit the stumps, but did not have enough force to disturb the bails.

Jadeja too beat the batsmen on several occasions and there were quite a few loud appeals for leg before.

The left-arm spinner will consider himself unlucky not to have got Latham's wicket when the ball got the inside edge, hit the Kiwi's boot and went to Lokesh Rahul at short leg.

Rahul managed to hold onto the ball after some initial fumble, but the third umpire ruled Latham not out as the ball had hit the grill of the fielder's helmet.

Earlier, the hosts were bowled out for 318 runs in the opening session of Day Two.

The Men in Blue scored 27 runs in seven overs to get past the 300-run mark in their historic 500th Test.

Resuming the day on 291/9, Ravindra Jadeja scored an unbeaten 42 from 44 balls with seven boundaries and a six, putting on an invaluable stand of 41 runs for the final wicket with Yadav, who survived 15 balls before gloving a short ball from pacer Wagner to New Zealand wicketkeeper Bradley-John Watling for nine runs.

For New Zealand, spinner Mitchell Santner and fast bowler Trent Boult claimed three wickets each, while Wagner bagged a couple. Inderbir Singh Sodhi and Mark Craig got one wicket each.

Brief scores:

New Zealand (first innings) 152/1 (Tom Latham 56 batting, Kane Williamson 66 batting; Umesh Yadav 1/22) vs India (first innings) 318 (Myrali Vijay 65, Cheteshwar Pujara 62, Ravindra Jadeja 42 not out; Trent Boult 3/67, Mitchell Santner 3/94).

--IANS

ajb/vt