New Zealand v Australia: Black Caps spooked by old ghosts in first test - Andrew Alderson

By Andrew Alderson at the Basin Reserve

New Zealand’s calamitous second day of the first test was best précised by a solitary split over in which they lost three wickets and succumbed to another Australian spooking.

The visitors’ bowling attack worked as a defibrillator to resuscitate the ghosts of tours past as Tom Latham, Kane Williamson and Rachin Ravindra departed in contrasting circumstances within six balls.

Let’s call them the entrée, the main and the dessert.

Latham played on to Mitchell Starc from the fourth delivery of the fifth over, a soft canape of a dismissal. He shaped to defend on the line of off stump, but brought the bat down on too much of a horizontal angle, ricocheting the ball into timber.

Once the bails had been reset, Williamson and Young made a meal of running between the wickets to complete the over.

The No 3 drove his second ball to mid-off and suffered a run out of banquet proportions. That included clashing with Young and Starc in the middle of the pitch and creating a Spaghetti Junction moment of cricketing traffic congestion. Marnus Labuschagne was faced with an eeny-meeny-miny-moe dilemma as to which of the non-striker stumps he should ping.

The incident raised several points over culpability.

First, the run was risky and doubt remains, hypothetically, over whether Williamson would have made his ground with a clear dash.

Second, Young was ball-watching momentarily, but it’s hard not to when the stroke goes directly past you.

Third, Young started running on the offside because left-armer Starc had been bowling over-the-wicket. Starc, naturally went towards the ball - and Young - in his follow-through. The problem came when Williamson took that path too, rather than the legside of the pitch.

As a Bermuda Triangle of blame emerged on the offside, Labuschagne had a clear target at the castle. Williamson’s departure will rank as one of the slowest and most painful of any batter this summer. He was last run out in a test against Zimbabwe at Napier in January 2012, 156 innings ago.

When the anguish had been cleared off the table of smashed dreams, Ravindra offered a sweet surrender from the third ball of the sixth over to complete the three courses at 12 for three, blazing some width from Josh Hazlewood to Nathan Lyon at point.

New Zealand are a side capable of miraculous recoveries, and curiously Australia did not enforce the follow-on at the Basin Reserve as England did fatefully last summer. However, they have lost seven straight tests to their transtasman opponents since the 2011 Hobart victory.

A similar narrative to past series between these countries looks poised to ensue if such a lack of confidence in facing the world champions continues.