Injured Taylor superb as NZ seal famous win
Anyone who doubted Ross Taylor’s importance to the Black Caps should be scoffing their face with humble pie.
The fit-again batsman struck
181 from 147 deliveries – his second match-winning ton of the fivematch series with England – as the Black Caps hauled in the tourists’
335-9 with three balls left yesterday.
As he did in Hamilton in game one, Taylor joined Tom Latham (71 from 66) to set up the five-wicket win, this time at Dunedin’s University Oval to drag the series into a decider in Christchurch on Saturday.
Taylor, having strolled to the crease when his side appeared doomed at 2-2, was magnificent, particularly as the troublesome thigh injury which forced him to miss the last match flared up late in his knock. His new highest ODI score included 17 fours and six sixes – two of them departed the ground – and had the 5442-strong crowd in raptures.
Even as the clouds swooped in on Dunedin and made for gloomy conditions, Taylor kept on swinging and everything he struck turned to gold.
When he wasn’t middling it, the edges were flying past fielders and racing to the fence. Quite simply, it was carnage for the English attack.
England will look back and wonder how the match got away considering New Zealand needed
141 runs from the last 15 overs. While Latham eventually departed attempting to tonk seamer Tom Curran out of the park, big-hitter Colin de Grandhomme (23) and Henry Nicholls (13 not out) chipped in.
Before Taylor’s brilliance, New Zealand had mostly been poor.
Led by centuries to Jonny Bairstow and Joe Root, England plundered 335-9 – at the time the second highest ODI score at the venue. Had they not lost 13-5 after bolting to 267-1 in the 38th over, they almost certainly would have eclipsed New Zealand’s record (360-5 against Sri Lanka in 2015).