Horror day for Williamson at MCG
When Kane Williamson leaned back and skied an ambitious pull shot, the Melbourne crowd roaring, his head slumped in shame.
A poor shot by a usually diligent batsman, it completed the Friday horrors for New Zealand’s captain whose team was battered first by centurymaker Travis Head, then Australia’s ruthless 140kmh-plus pace attack on day two of the Boxing Day test.
Too big, too fast, too strong. And several notches above their Kiwi counterparts.
There’s only one potential winner of this second cricket test and Australia are at microscopic odds after the Black Caps limped to stumps 44-2 in reply to the hosts’ 467 off a marathon 155.1 overs.
Ross Taylor and dogged opener Tom Latham (9 off 57 balls) will resume on day three, a mammoth task for the senior men to bat, and bat, to avoid MCG defeat. Taylor survived after being given lbw fourth ball to James Pattinson, his decision review system challenge showing the ball bouncing over.
Before a crowd of 59,676 – a combined 140,000 on the first two days – Williamson (9) followed the recalled Tom Blundell (15) back up the players’ tunnel in the lengthening shadows.
What an introduction it was for Blundell, a middle order man opening for the first time against Mitchell Starc breathing fire, the slips standing almost in the next postcode.
The first one was 148kmh and he started promisingly, working Starc off his pads and producing two Williamson-like glides off the back foot to the rope. One flew off a length and beat everyone, including gloveman Tim Paine.
Pat Cummins ended Blundell’s stay on 15, enticing a drive and an edge from a full, fast one.
Williamson looked in control, gliding, ducking and weaving, until his blood rush against Pattinson which was pouched by Paine. The intensity against the world’s best pace attack is such that slight misjudgements are punished. With that, New Zealand’s hopes nosedived.
It was tough toil for the Black Caps for whom Neil Wagner shone, taking 4-83 to give him 40 wickets from 10 test innings this year.
Australia resumed with their noses in front, and any faint New Zealand hopes of winning a first test in Melbourne in four attempts soon wafted over the Great Southern Stand. Having snared four day one wickets after winning the toss – two fewer than needed for a good day – it was always tenuous.
It got downright ugly at times, and reached a low point when Blundell was thrown the ball by Williamson after lunch with Australia 336-5. Blundell was a batsman/ offspinner in the New Zealand under-19s but gave the spin away to take up wicketkeeping.
His introduction showed how poorly Mitchell Santner had bowled, and Williamson’s continued reluctance to use his own handy offspin to quell the run rate and give the hard-toiling pacemen a rest.
Former skipper Brendon McCullum was unimpressed in the radio box. ‘‘It’s just staggering. The game is still in the balance, to me it was a submissive move [to bowl Blundell].’’
The barometer of New Zealand’s performance rose and fell with Wagner on day two when the mercury remained in the pleasant mid20s.
The lion-hearted left-armer produced something from nothing to remove Steve Smith (85) when the former skipper was odds-on to raise his fifth century in as many MCG tests.
Wagner, charging in, fired one at Smith’s nostrils and he lobbed one to Henry Nicholls who leapt and snaffled it in his fingertips, a wonderful catch.
Either side of the Blundell experiment, with Santner unable to string any kind of spell together, Head and his skipper Paine added 150 to ensure Australia couldn’t lose.
Santner’s 0-82 off 20 overs ensured he won’t play in Sydney, and extended his wicketless Australian stint to 61 overs. It also magnified the folly of leaving out Todd Astle, much better performed in first-class cricket.
The quicks didn’t really hunt as a pack on a flat surface and they were left bereft of wicket-taking options. Trent Boult was handy and occasionally hostile while Tim Southee looked down on pace before snaring three bonus wickets at the end.
Wagner, again, broke the partnership, trapping Paine (79) in front, around the wicket to New Zealand’s first DRS challenge of the innings in the 150th over.