Latham first Kiwi to carry his bat in ODI

Still unbeaten on 79 off 98 balls when Ish Sodhi was trapped lbw to finish the innings in the 44th over, Latham showed the pitch was far from unplayable. But the fact he was still standing - the 10th batsman to do so - was an indictment on how poor his fellow batsmen were as they slumped to 65-7. 

“There was a bit of variable bounce early on and the ball did swing around when they hit a hard length. Unfortunately, we lost early wickets in the top-10 and continued to lose wickets at regular intervals after that,” he said. 

Latham looked largely untroubled with the ball coming on, cover driving the quicks and sweeping the spinners effectively. Sometimes it seemed he was playing a different game to his team-mates who were fooled by swing and bounce early, before others holed out to soft catches.

“As an opener you want to spend as much time in the middle as possible. Obviously losing wickets at the other end dictated the way I had to play,” Latham said.