NZ Vs SL 1st Test Match: The Lankans Tigers are on the tour of New Zealand for a full-fleshed series across the formats.
Sri Lanka will play two Test matches which are highly important than anything else because their place in the finals of the World Test Championship is at stake.
The visitors, Sri Lanka needs to win this series by a margin of two nil to qualify for that ICC event in the red ball format.
Sri Lanka has made a decent start to the series in the first Test match which started yesterday, i.e. Thursday, 9th March 2023 at Hagley Oval in Christchurch.
The home side, New Zealand won the toss and elected to bowl first. Still, Sri Lanka posted a competitive score of 355 runs in their 1st innings.
That was mainly because of a couple of half-centuries and some good contributions that the Lankan batters got.
Kusal Mendis was the top scorer for the Lankans Tigers in their 1st innings. Mendis scored well and made 87 runs from just 83 balls with 16 boundaries.
Skipper Karunaratne scored 50 runs along with Angelo Mathews and Dhananjaya de Silva too scored 46 and 47 runs respectively.
The home side continues to struggle in the red ball matches even after their close win against England at Wellington last month.
Tim Southee picked up a five-wicket haul and Neil Wagner got four scalps which helped the Kiwis to end the Lankan innings on 355 runs on day one yesterday.
But the second day has belonged to Sri Lanka because they picked up five wickets with just 162 runs on the board.
The Kiwi openers, Latham and Conway had started the innings decently for the home side. They shared a partnership of 67 runs for the opening wicket.
But it was Asitha Fernando who got the breakthrough for the Lankan Tigers. Devon Conway was dismissed after getting a decent start of 30 runs.
Kane Williamson, the former red ball skipper of the New Zealand team was also the player of the match in the second Test match against England which the Kiwis won by just one run.
But here he was dismissed for a low score and Henry Nicholls too was out cheaply along with Tom Blundell.
Tom Latham was the top scorer for the Black Caps side so far. He was dismissed for 67 runs.
Daryl Mitchell is still batting on unbeaten 40 runs and he is the last hope for the Kiwis to survive in this opening Test match.
New Zealand is still trailed by 193 runs and the Kiwi fans will want Mitchell to come good on the 3rd day tomorrow along with Michael Bracewell who can bat for a longer period of time. Bracewell is not out on nine runs.
While the Lankans will look to wrap up the innings of the home side, New Zealand.
Their bowlers have been good until now and they will aim to carry that good work tomorrow as well which would help them to dominate the first Test match and even get a 1-0 lead later on.
So far, Asitha Fernando and Lahiru Kumara have picked two wickets each to their names while Kasun Rajitha has picked up a lone wicket in this innings.
