New Zealand, for once, did not choke as they aced down a mammoth total by India at Hamilton to take first honours in the ODI series after a 0-5 drubbing in the T20Is preceding this. Driven by Ross Taylor and the exuberant Tom Latham, who is stand-in skipper for the first two games, New Zealand recorded a brilliant run-chase. Here are some stats and figures from the exceptional effort.
Highest run-chase by New Zealand
The 348 runs they chased down is the highest total successfully chased by the Black Caps in ODIs. Thr previous highest chase by them in ODIs also came at Hamilton 13 years back when they chased down a target of 347 against Australia. In the same series, they had also chased 337 to win a game.
Ross Taylor factor
Ross Taylor has been a terrific batsman for New Zealand in ODIs. Taylor recorded his 19th ODI century from the no. 4 position at Hamilton on Wednesday. He has the most hundreds from no.4 in ODIs and also the most number of runs by any batsman at the position.
Taylor has also been clinical in big run-chases for the Kiwis. In three of New Zealand’s four highest ODI run-chsses, Taylor has recorded centuries. He has also been uber consistent against India in this regard. In three of New Zealand’s highest run-chases against India, Taylor has two centuries and a 95.
The Taylor – Latham camaraderie
Ross Taylor and Tom Latham share amazing rapport in this format. The two have the highest partnership runs for the fourth wicket since the beginning of 2012 – 1420 runs at an average of 71 with five century stands, one double hundred partnership and four half-century stands.
On Wednesday, their partnership went at a run-rate of 10.48, which is the second-fastest century partnership for fourth wicket or lower in a successful run-chase. The highest was recorded by Virat Kohli and Suresh Raina in 2012 at Hobart.
No. 4 and No. 5 on fire
This was just the third instance of the no. 4 batsman from both sides – Shreyas Iyer and Ross Taylor – scoring a century in an ODI.
Together with the no. 5 batsmen – KL Rahul and Tom Latham – the no. 4 and 5 and batsmen recorded 369 runs which is the second-highest in any ODI match after the 2017 game between England and India when 387 runs were recorded by Yuvraj Singh (150), MS Dhoni (134), Eoin Morgan (102) and Ben Stokes (1).