New Delhi: New Zealand dropped eight catches on way to an eight wicket defeat to England in the first Test in Christchurch. But the home side doesn’t want to dwell too much on the missed chances, prefeering to view it as a one-off thing.
The normally sound fielding side uncharacteristically dropped catches in their defeat with skipper Tom Latham guilty of spurning three chances.
Those missed opportunities saw the game slipped through the home team’s fingers and left Latham ruing them as “unfortunate” as Harry Brook starred with 171-run knock.
It enabled England to take a big lead of 151 in the first innings as Brook, skipper Ben Stokes, Ben Duckett and Brydon Carse all enjoyed lives, going on to add a combined 231 runs after reprieves.
‘Unfortunate’
Yet Latham said there is no need to overreact as they were given a reality check after a historic 3-0 series win in India.
“To take some catches, myself included, things might have looked slightly different,” Latham said after their loss on Sunday.
“Even though the result of the game does look quite big there are small margins in the game of cricket and unfortunately it did not fall right.”
New Zealand’s #WTC25 final chances take a big hit following their loss to England in Christchurch 👀#NZvENGhttps://t.co/REv3E3qUtC
— ICC (@ICC) December 1, 2024
Latham insisted it was one bad game for their overall fielding unit and doesn’t need special steps to rectify the issue ahead of the second Test that begins in Wellington on Friday.
“I don’t think that’s something that requires work. We try not to over-emphasise things. We know we need to be better and we’ll hopefully do that in Wellington,” he said.
New Zealand dropped eight catches as they lost by eight wickets to England in the first Test in Christchurch Cricket Sports News: Latest Cricket News, Cricket Live Score, Sports Breaking News from Sports Today
