New Zealand spinner Bruce Martin took four wickets on his Test debut against England.
Left-arm Bruce Martin has had to wait longer than most for his Test opportunity. At 32-years-old Martin is 10 years older than England’s newest player Joe Root.
But Martin dismissed Root in an innings that held very few positives for New Zealand.
England batted to 465 all-out on the second day of the second Test at Wellington, with batsmen Nick Compton and Jonathan Trott both scoring centuries.
Black Caps new boy Martin went some way to ensuring that score wasn’t higher however. The spinner took four wickets for 138 runs – with the prize scalp of Kevin Pietersen the pick of the lot.
Pietersen scored 73 for England as he and Martin had a long running battle which the Kiwi eventually won – even though the England man hit the spinner’s first ball of the day for six.
The South African-born batsman was out when he tried to smash Martin’s ball to the boundary, but misjudged the flight and only succeeded in serving up an easy catch for mid-off.
“It’s nice to test yourself against a guy like that,” Martin said about Pietersen on Sky Sports.
“He’s such an imposing figure with the bat. I wanted to try and get in the fight a little bit more, let him know I was there.”
Despite the two players being the same age, Pietersen has played 92 more Test matches than his counterpart.
Martin may only be playing his first Test but he has certainly put in the practice. The 32-year-old has played 115 first-class matches, the most any of the New Zealand team had played before getting their first cap.
The hosts finished the day on 66-3 in reply to England, still needing 200 runs to avoid the follow-on going into day three.
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