Openers Martin Guptill and Tom Latham gave New Zealand a solid start as they reached 44 without loss in reply to England’s 389 at lunch on the second day of the first Test at Lord’s yesterday.
Guptill was caught by Alastair Cook at first slip off Mark Wood just before the interval, but the pace bowler was denied his first Test wicket because replays showed he had overstepped the crease and the delivery was called a no-ball.
Guptill (26 not out) and Latham (13) were otherwise largely untroubled by the England pace attack in overcast conditions at the home of cricket.
Photo: AP
New Zealand took three wickets in the first hour to wrap up the England innings after the hosts resumed on 354-7.
Moeen Ali reached his half-century before edging left-arm seamer Trent Boult to stand-in wicketkeeper Latham for 58.
Stuart Broad’s miserable batting form continued when he nicked Boult through to Latham for 3 and James Anderson, on 11, was caught and bowled by Matt Henry.
Boult completed figures of 4-79 and Henry took 4-93 on Test debut.
On Thursday, England all-rounder Ben Stokes was left to reflect on what a difference 10 months can make after a stirring innings of 92 on the first day.
In July last year, Stokes was out for a duck in each innings of the Lord’s Test, a match India won by 95 runs to go 1-0 up in the series.
Stokes, in the thick of a miserable run of low scores for England in all formats, was dropped from the team and it was not until last month that he resumed his Test career, against the West Indies in the Caribbean.
The West Indies had earlier been the scene of one of Stokes’ career lows when he broke his wrist hitting a locker in frustration after a golden duck in a Twenty20 match against the West Indies in Bridgetown last year.
“Punching the locker was a stupid moment and something, I hope, I’ll never do again — because lockers are generally harder than bones and wrists,” Stokes said after Thursday’s play.
Hours earlier, the 23-year-old Durham all-rounder had walked out to bat with England in the dire position of 30-4 after losing the toss.
However, he responded by putting on 161 for the fifth wicket with Joe Root — who also fell shy of a hundred in making 98.
Stokes was bowled playing no stroke to off-spinner Mark Craig when in sight of what would have been just his second Test century following a dynamic 120 against Australia in Perth in 2013.
England finished the first day on 354-7.
Stokes, trying to put his innings into context, said: “I bagged a pair last time I was here, so things couldn’t have got any worse really.”
“It was obviously disappointing to get out so close to a hundred at Lord’s, but the bigger picture is we’re in a really good position now,” Stokes said.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier