New Zealand captain Mitch Santner credited a \u201cgreat collective performance\u201d for his side\u2019s dominant nine-wicket victory over Zimbabwe on the third day of the first Test at Queens Sports Club on Friday. While praising the bowlers for their outstanding efforts, Santner noted that the team\u2019s batting still left room for improvement. New Zealand\u2019s pace attack, led by Matt Henry, dismissed Zimbabwe for 149 in the first innings and 165 in the second, securing a commanding 158-run lead. The Black Caps required just eight runs to seal the win. Henry, who claimed nine wickets for 90 runs across both innings, was named Player of the Match for his match-winning performance. \u201cThere was more in it [the pitch] than we thought. We held our lengths and lines,\u201d said Santner, who captained New Zealand for the first time in a Test in the absence of Tom Latham with a shoulder injury. It was New Zealand\u2019s first Test match of the year and Henry\u2019s performance came immediately after a triangular T20 series won by New Zealand in Harare, where Henry was player of the tournament. \u201cWith the chop and change in formats, you\u2019ve got to trust the work you\u2019ve put in,\u201d said Henry. \u201cWhen you have assistance [from conditions], it was great we were able to exploit it.\u201d New Zealand were bowled out for 307 in their first innings, with the only major contributions coming from Devon Conway (88) and Daryl Mitchell (80). \u201cWe could have batted a bit better,\u201d said Santner. \u201cWe had good intent. We talked about getting partnerships together but didn\u2019t have many significant ones.\u201d Santner said there was concern about the condition of seamer Nathan Smith, who took three for 20 in the first innings of just his third Test but could not take the field in the second innings because of an abdominal injury. \u201cI feel for him. He bowled so well in the first innings but it doesn\u2019t look good for him,\u201d said Santner. Zimbabwe captain Craig Ervine said his batsmen had shown more application than they did in two recent Tests against South Africa in Bulawayo. \u201cThere was a fair bit in the wicket but the guys tried to grind it out,\u201d he said. Ervine said a key passage of play was on the first evening when Conway and Will Young put on 92 without loss for the first wicket despite Zimbabwe bowling well. \u201cI haven\u2019t seen as much lateral movement as there was here for a while. We could have easily picked up two or three [wickets].\u201d Santner took four for 27 in the second innings, while Henry and Will O\u2019Rourke picked up three wickets each Veteran left-handers Sean Williams (49) and Craig Ervine (22) shared a fifth wicket stand of 57, while wicket-keeper Tafadzwa Tsiga (27) and fast bowler Blessing Muzarabani (19) put on 36 for the ninth wicket to make New Zealand bat again. New Zealand were hampered by the absence of Smith and O\u2019Rourke, who was feeling stiffness after his morning spell. The teams meet again in the second Test at the same venue from Thursday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New Zealand captain Mitch Santner credited a \u201cgreat collective performance\u201d for his side\u2019s dominant nine-wicket victory over Zimbabwe on the third day of the first…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26243,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26242\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}