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5th over: England 26-1 (Smith 13, Root 12) Tight lines from Duffy. Just a single to Root behind square off the over.
4th over: England 25-1 (Smith 13, Root 11) Jamie Smith clatters a pull shot to the midwicket fence for four and then picks up a single in the same region. Root continues his busy start with a single past point and Jamie Smith then plays a nonchalant flick for SIX onto the grass bank on the leg side.
3rd over: England 13-1 (Smith 2, Root 10) Joe Root is the new batter. He whips Duffy off his pads for two and then times the next one even better for four. Root then pings a drive through cover for four more! Ten runs and the wicket of Duckett off the over.
WICKET! Ben Duckett c †Latham b Duffy 1 (England 3-1)
Gone! Lovely ball from Duffy, Duckett doesn’t do much wrong but gets a feather through to the keeper. Here we go again?
2nd over: England 3-0 (Smith 2, Duckett 1) Zakary Foulkes and his fast arm start the next over to Duckett. Ripper! Foulkes is getting some late movement and he beats Duckett outside off stump before inducing a leading edge that luckily lands safe for the pint sized opener. Duckett used his feet and glides a single to deep point to open the scoring. Smith drives compactly for two next ball but misses out on a pull off the last.
1st over: England 0-0 (Smith 0, Duckett 0) Jamie Smith defends the first ball of the match… which is a darn sight better than how it went last time when Matt Henry splattered his stumps. He’ll be a big miss today for New Zealand. Duffy is full and there’s a hint of swing, five dots as he keeps Smith honest. Smith drives the last ball but can’t beat the ring. A maiden over to start.
The New Zealand players huddle on the boundary edge, the sun is out now in Hamilton. The forecast is actually pretty good, maybe the odd scattered shower. Duckett and Smith head out to the middle. Jacob Duffy will start with the new ball. Let’s play!
TEAMS:
England 1 Jamie Smith, 2 Ben Duckett, 3 Joe Root, 4 Jacob Bethell, 5 Harry Brook (c), 6 Jos Buttler (wk), 7 Sam Curran, 8 Jamie Overton, 9 Brydon Carse, 10 Adil Rashid, 11 Jofra Archer
New Zealand 1 Will Young, 2 Rachin Ravindra, 3 Kane Williamson, 4 Daryl Mitchell, 5 Tom Latham (wk), 6 Michael Bracewell, 7 Mitchell Santner (c), 8 Nathan Smith, 9 Zakary Foulkes, 10 Blair Tickner, 11 Jacob Duffy
Play will start in ten minutes!
“In fact Matt Henry has a calf strain.” says Simon. “His thighs are fine.”
Which makes my mind immediately go to this. ‘The Edge is fine.’
New Zealand win the toss and choose to bowl first
No official word yet but the rain seems to have stopped and there’s plenty of blue sky about. In fact we go live to the toss right now…
Mitch Santner wins it and chooses to bowl first. He’ll be hoping for a rinse and repeat job on England’s top order.
Harry Brook confirms he would have bowled first and also that Jofra Archer is going to play!
“More than two years have passed since Blair Tickner last played for New Zealand, two years in which his life was thrown into chaos, his career into doubt, his family into crisis. “Obviously people haven’t seen me as much, but I feel like I’ve been doing all the right things for the last two years,” he said of his call-up, one game into the ODI series against England. “So nothing’s really changed. I’m still the same guy.” This is not true. So much has changed, and he is not the same guy.”
Preamble
James Wallace
Hello and welcome to the second ODI between New Zealand and England from Hamilton.
After defeat by four wickets in the first match England need to take this game in order to force a decider on Saturday. Captain Harry Brook showed he is in blistering form with the bat by slugging 135 off 101 balls in Mount Maunganui but the rest of England’s top order collapsed like a meringue under a Kiwi sledgehammer.
Unfortunately there’s a delay to the toss as there is some rain around in Hamilton. Fingers crossed it blows through in no time. Our man on the ground is Simon Burnton, he flings a missive and brings some team news:
“Afternoon/morning/whatever. Some team news today from the New Zealand camp: Matt Henry has been ruled out of this game with a thigh strain, which means Blair Tickner will make an emotional return to the XI in front of his family. Decent weather forecast, though it’s windy - as it has been since England arrived in the country - and Hamilton seems to have a habit of chucking some rain at you when you least expect it. It’s fair to say it hasn’t shown its best side to us: Monday was Labour Day here, a bank holiday, which meant the town centre was deserted and most things were closed, and then yesterday the weather was filthy and in the evening it was absolutely freezing. This morning I went for a pootle along the river, for some of which the sun shone and everything looked much improved. Hoping we see a bit more of it this afternoon.”
Apparently the rain is abating so hopefully we’ll get a toin coss and some action soon. Join me!
