ACS Overseas First-Class Annual 2019

297 New Zealand in 2018/19 After a quiet Test season in 2017/18, New Zealand had a much busier time of it in 2018/19 and the summer of 2019, playing four Test series, two at home and two away. Three of the series were won and the other drawn, with the nine matches bringing six wins (three of them by an innings, and another by over 400 runs), a draw, and two defeats. On results alone, this was a highly successful period for New Zealand, whose Test triumphs were reflected in a rise almost to the top of the ICC Test rankings. Almost, but not quite.  When the 2018/19 season started, New Zealand stood fifth in the rankings. Their first challenge was a three-match series in the UAE against Pakistan, in which the first Test was a real thriller. New Zealand squeezed home by just four runs after Pakistan, needing 176 to win a relatively low- scoring game, collapsed from 147-4 to 171 all out, hastened to defeat by a five-for from debutant slow left-armer Ajaz Patel. The leg-spin of Pakistan’s Yasir Shah did for the visitors in the second Test, in which New Zealand were made to follow on, and duly lost by an innings. But fortunes were again reversed in the third Test when, for the second time in the series, New Zealand overcame a first-innings deficit of precisely 74, and secured an eventual win by 123 runs, thanks once again to Patel and another newcomer, 34-year-old off-spinner Will Somerville, who had played most of his first-class cricket to date in Australia.  The following two-match home series against Sri Lanka began with opener Tom Latham making a score of 264*, the highest-ever score by a batsman carrying his bat through a Test innings. This looked to have laid the ground for a comfortable victory, but fine defensive innings by Kusal Mendis and Angelo Mathews, together with last-day rain, left the game as a draw. Latham (176) was again to the fore in the following match at Christchurch, in which New Zealand’s victory by 423 runs was their biggest by a runs margin in any Test.  Bangladesh were the next victims, suffering two innings defeats in New Zealand in February and March 2019. In the first Test, New Zealand racked up their first-ever innings total of over 700, with Kane Williamson contributing his second Test double-century; while in the second Test it was Ross Taylor’s turn, with his third. A third Test was due to follow at Christchurch, starting on 16 March, but it was immediately cancelled following the terrorist shooting in the city on the 15th.  By now, aided by the failure of some of the teams above them in the rankings to win their own series, New Zealand had risen to an unprecedented second place in the ICC table, and they began their final series of the period under review – a return series in Sri Lanka inAugust 2019 – only two ranking points behind India. A 2-0 win in the series would take them to the top of the tree; but any hopes of this were dashed when they allowed Sri Lanka to chase down 268 in the first Test at Galle. New Zealand’s innings victory in the second Test ensured that they drew the series, but overall this was surely not the outcome they had been hoping for.  Alongside the successes of the established players – bowlers as well as batsmen – this period had seen the full flowering at Test level of opener Tom Latham, who scored 844 runs at an average of 120, including four scores of over 150, in New Zealand’s last three series. He may not have been the most exciting batsman to watch, but his runs and his steadiness were of real value to a side on the up. Among the bowlers, while the spinners predictably flourished in Tests in Asia, the home summer was a triumph for the three main fast men, with Trent Boult, Tim Southee and Neil Wagner between them accounting for 66 of the 72 of their opponents’ wickets that fell in the series against Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.  So New Zealand ended the 2019 summer in second place in the Test rankings, even if their chance of taking the top spot from India seemed to have passed. But in their four series of 2018/19 and 2019 they never played a team placed, at the time, higher than sixth in the rankings. It is a cliché to say that New Zealand generally punch above their weight at Test level; but scheduled series against England, Australia and India in 2019/20 will surely test their mettle rather more, and should show just how strong that punch really is.