India v/s New Zealand 2017: Tom Latham confident of firing from middle-order

The retirement of Luke Ronchi after the ICC Champions Trophy in June has left the New Zealand wicket-keeping slot vacant in limited-overs. The Kane Williamson-led Kiwis have a specialist 'keeper in Glenn Phillips, who is yet to make ODI debut but has appeared in one T20I.

But, the preference goes to opening batsman-cum-wicketkeeper Tom Latham, who kept full 50 overs in the second and final practice match against Board President’s XI at Cricket Club of India on Thursday and
the first 30 overs of the first on Tuesday.

Basically an opener – he has played 37 of his 57 ODI innings in that position – Latham will be pushed down to No. 5 in the ODIs as coach Mike Hesson is promoting hard-hitting Colin Munro to open the batting with Martin Guptill.

The 25-year-old left-handed Latham is not totally new to wicket-keeping, though. He has donned the gloves in eight of the 58 ODIs, effecting four stumpings and taking nine catches. He admitted he was not training enough for wicket-keeping when Ronchi was around as he was the designated opener.

“Obviously, when Luke was around, I did not do much (training for wicketkeeping),” said Latham on Thursday after the warm-up game. “Since he has retired, that position has come up. Certainly, I do a lot more practice around that. It is not an easy place to keep over here. I have a couple of days to do a bit of fine tuning and hopefully I can be up and running.”

While Latham has scored a majority of his ODI runs including his three centuries and eight fifties as an opener, the cricketer from Christchurch will have to make some adjustments while batting in the middle-order. He warmed up for the No. 5 position by scoring a confident 108 (retired) at a strike rate of 111.34 on Thursday. This came after topscoring with 59 in 63 balls in the first practice game two days earlier.

Asked what adjustments he had to make while moving from the top to the middle order, Latham said: “It is probably more a mental shift as opposed to technical. Need to get the tactics right. Obviously the spinners will be bowling through the middle (overs) and it is all about sticking to your game plan. It is different to batting at the top, the ball is not quite as new. On the other hand, there are more gaps, so you can hit.”

Latham said he could take the confidence of Thursday’s century in humid conditions and also the fact that he top-scored for New Zealand in their last visit to India for ODIs in 2016. Latham piled on 244 at 61.00 with two fifties and two other scores of 39 and 46 in the five matches.

“It is nice when you come over to these conditions and feel you have scored runs before,” Latham sounded confident. “I guess that is the confidence you can take from the last series. The team as a whole was pretty close. We took it to the last game and could not get over the line. This group is pretty confident, it's nice to play some good cricket today (Thursday) and hopefully we can take it to the next game.”

Latham is aware of the threat that the Indian wrist spinners Kuldeep Yadav and Yuzvendra Chahal pose. He said: “It is nice to have a couple of left-armers and a leggie playing in warm-ups. That was an ideal preparation. Whatever we want, we can get stuff from footage. We know they are quality bowlers and have done really well in the previous series.

“Obviously, there is big focus on spin here. We played a little bit more spin than seam back home, finding ways to score and ways to find the gaps and find boundaries. That is probably the biggest thing coming here.”