Young, Henry star as New Zealand win ODI opener

An important 90* with the bat backed up a solid bowling innings for New Zealand in the ODI opener against Sri Lanka in Wellington today.

Early success came for the New Zealand bowlers with Matt Henry, Jacob Duffy and Nathan Smith working to restrict the visitors to 23/4 in the powerplay.

New Zealanders bowlers bowled well during the opening ten overs, particularly with the fact that they had to run into the wind for the half of the overs from the RA Vance stand end of the Cello Basin Reserve.

Avishka Fernando, who would not have performed as he wanted during the T20I series was sent up the top of the order to open and showed his class with a ninth international half-century before falling to Smith.

Contributions from Janith Liyanage (36), Chamindu Wickramasinghe (22) and some late hitting by Wanindu Hasaranga (35) got the Sri Lankans to 178 from 43.4 overs.

The tail was largely taken care of by Henry who finished with figures of 4/19 from his ten overs whilst Smith and Duffy both took four wickets between them.

A 87 run fifth wicket stand between Liyanage and Fernando was the crucial partnership of the innings but the pair both found themselves out in quick succession of each other.

New Zealand’s openers, Rachin Ravindra and Will Young led the way with the bat as they put on a 93 run stand that set the tone for the innings.

Young went on to reach his 10th one day international half-century whilst Ravindra fell five runs short of a fourth ODI 50.

Mark Chapman (29*) worked well alongside Young, who went on to make 90* as the hosts picked up a comfortable nine wicket win in just 26.2 overs.

Wickramasinghe picked up the solitary wicket whilst debutant Eshan Maling went for 41 runs from his five overs.

The second ODI will take place in Kirikiriroa - Hamilton on Wednesday with the Blackcaps looking to wrap up the series heading into the final match at Eden Park next Saturday.