New Zealand had a tough start to the game, losing two wickets in the first over to Shoriful Islam. Rachin Ravindra and Henry Nicholls were both caught without scoring. However, the team recovered well with a remarkable 171-run partnership for the third wicket between Will Young (who scored 105 off 84 balls) and captain Tom Latham (who made 92 runs). Young felt fortunate that Bangladesh used the part-time bowler Soumya Sarker in the death overs, as Sarker ended up conceding 61 runs in his six overs.

“Well, they bowled really well at the start. I think they bowled to get the two breakthroughs early is key and they bet a lot and was getting the ball to swing. I suppose at times it can be tough for touring teams to find the right length in New Zealand conditions and then a bit tough when you come back out and there’s ten overs to go and the main bowlers have used up a lot of their overs,”

“I think we were just quite lucky in the fact that their 6th bowler, as it were, had to get six overs out of that option later in the innings, which can be tough in New Zealand, the boundaries, rather, are quite small and if you’ve got set batsmen, it can be quite hard to defend. So, yeah, as I say, it worked for us today,” he added.