Cricket: Taylor leads Black Caps from front

Ross Taylor celebrates his century at McLean Park, his first hundred in 17 test innings. Photo / Paul Taylor

Livescoring

Ross Taylor made a personal success of his first day in charge of a test on home soil yesterday.

His sixth test hundred, 111 not out, anchored New Zealand's first innings and they will start today at 331 for five, ready to press on before aiming to make life awkward for Zimbabwe's batsmen.

Having strong individual form never hurts a captain's position and considering it is Taylor's first hundred for 17 test innings, and on the back of steering New Zealand to a celebrated victory over Australia last month, he should have slept soundly last night after three hours at the crease on a hot day.

The tourists, having won the toss, needed another couple of wickets to feel good about the decision.

SCOREBOARD

The hinted-at big seam and bounce out of the McLean Park pitch proved an exaggeration. Zimbabwe should have ignored what their eyes suggested and batted. The locals would have told them the form here.

Instead New Zealand have the initiative. Despite bowling pluckily, Zimbabwe will now be in catch-up mode.

Certainly there was help for the seamers early on, and Martin Guptill and Brendon McCullum had to take some care. But Zimbabwe's attack, led by the industrious Kyle Jarvis, is more about honest endeavour than a collection of snarling bat-beaters.

Once in, it became apparent that batsmen who displayed a bit of care and attention to detail could certainly prosper.

Those of a suspicious mind, looking for signs that batsmen still had their T20 wings on, would generally have been disappointed.

Guptill and McCullum put on 124, their second century stand as an opening pair in nine innings, both driving crisply, and survived the occasional alarm.

At lunch it looked grim at 98 for none, but perseverance got its reward.

Zimbabwe figured out shortly before lunch and through the middle session how to at least make New Zealand work for their runs.

New Zealand effectively lost five for 154 through the afternoon.

Seamer Shingirai Mazakadza got a maiden test wicket on an encouraging debut with a good lifter to Guptill before Kane Williamson came and went on a run-out mixup.

He drove legspinner Graeme Cremer's first ball to extra cover and set off, but when he got to the non-strikers' end found McCullum still there.

Legspinners make cricket interesting. Cremer immediately beat Ross Taylor with a beauty, which spun and bounced. Later he had Dan Vettori stumped by a snappy piece of keeping by Tatenda Taibu.

But in between his length was too inconsistent and batsmen could sit on him and wait for the poor ball.

McCullum had a seventh century in sight when he departed three overs after tea.

Dean Brownlie's first test innings at home was inauspicious.

At Brisbane last month he was dropped twice early en route to an unbeaten 77. Here he discovered two chances were one too many.

Dropped at second slip fourth ball, he left three balls later, jabbing at a delivery moving away from occasional medium pacer Hamilton Mazakadza.

Vettori hurried the innings along. He scores deceptively quickly. A pull, a drive and a spear over slips and he was up to 20 in no time.

All the while Taylor went about his business. He was circumspect to his half century in 87 balls before accelerating, and reaching his second hundred at Napier with a fine straight drive.

He and Vettori rattled up 82 in smart time and Taylor got to his hundred in ideal fashion, with a straight driven four.

Taylor has batted 215 minutes, and faced 168 balls in a display which has something of a statement of intent about it.

Early control rewards Taylor with sixth ton

Ross Taylor stuck to his 30-ball rule and got a rich reward at McLean Park yesterday.

The New Zealand captain's century put the hosts in charge of the one-off test against Zimbabwe and having explained the importance of his batsmen setting out their stall before looking to take charge, Taylor told of his own thinking on his unbeaten 111.

"I find on New Zealand and Australian wickets, driving early on I get myself in trouble," he said last night.

"I tried to get myself in [over] that first 20-30 balls and felt like I did that. I just played off the back foot and cut as much as possible and left the driving until it was really full."

The result was an impressive sixth test ton and the chance to press on today.

"Every captain wants to lead from the front and I want to score hundreds. I've scored a lot of 50s and my conversion rate hasn't been great.

"That was extra special to go on and convert that. There's still a long way to go in this test match and a long way to go in my test career to try and convert more of these 50s into hundreds."

Ideally Taylor, who would have fielded first had he won the toss, would like New Zealand to bat just once, but suspects that may be difficult with the pitch sure to improve over the next couple of days for batsmen.

"We'll need 450 minimum. It's a fast-scoring outfield. If we're still batting after lunch hopefully we're around that 400-450 mark."

Young Zimbabwe seamer Kyle Jarvis admitted the tourists missed a trick or two with their bowling in the first session.

"It didn't move around as much as we thought it was going to. There was a bit there but we just didn't get it in the right areas," Jarvis said.

His fingers are crossed Zimbabwe can "nip one or two out early" and get into the New Zealand tail.