DUBAI // New Zealand opener Tom Latham is convinced Pakistan’s spinners are playable, but his team will have to adapt quickly if they want to level the series in the second Test starting in Dubai tomorrow.
Pakistan won the first Test in Abu Dhabi by 248 runs to take a 1-0 lead in the three-match series. New Zealand’s travails against spin will not lessen at the Dubai stadium where the pitch is more likely to turn.
Left-arm spinner Zulfiqar Babar took five wickets while legspinner Yasir Shah took four in the Abu Dhabi Test.
That came on the back of Babar’s 14 and Shah’s 12 in the 2-0 rout of Australia that preceded this series.
But Latham, who scored his first hundred in the opening Test, was convinced Pakistan’s spinners can be negated.
“Pakistan’s spinners obviously have variations, the make-up of their side is a left-armer and a legspinner and they do challenge us, but I don’t think they are unplayable,” Latham said after New Zealand’s training session yesterday.
Latham said New Zealand’s lower order put up a brave show against the Pakistan spinners on the final day.
“We showed that on the morning of the fifth day, and Ish [Sodhi] and Trent [Boult] dug in,” said Latham of the 10th wicket stand of 54 between Sodhi and Boult.
Sodhi made a career-best 63 while Boult remained not out on 19.
“They played really well so if we get ourselves in those situations and keep them [spinners] out for long then we can be able to put a big total on the board,” said Latham, whose father Rod also played for New Zealand.
“It’s a good opportunity to right some wrongs. We have shown that in the past in the West Indies after losing the second Test and then come back by winning the third and win the series,” said Latham of New Zealand’s 2-1 win in June this year.
“The basic principle is to apply ourselves, and you go out and if the ball is reverse swinging or spinning then we have to apply ourselves and try to adapt to the situation as quickly as possible to those conditions.”
Pakistan will be without opener Ahmed Shahzad for the second Test after he was ruled out of the Test series because of a minor skull fracture he sustained when he was hit by a bouncer from seamer Corey Anderson.
Shahzad made a career-best 176 in that knock.
The third and final Test will be begin in Sharjah on November 26. The teams will also play two Twenty20s and five one-day internationals.
