Christchurch. New Zealand opener Tom Latham made a name for himself in the category of some elite openers with a scintillating 252 runs on the second day of the second cricket Test against Bangladesh on Monday. As an opener in Test cricket, only Virender Sehwag has more than two total four innings of 250+ to his name. Sanath Jayasuriya, Graeme Smith, Chris Gayle, Alastair Cook and David Warner have two innings of 250+ as openers. Now Latham has also got his name written in this list.
Latham's 252 is the fourth highest individual score in Test matches against Bangladesh. Kumar Sangakkara is the only player to score a triple century against Bangladesh. He scored 319 runs in the Chattogram Test of 2014. On the other hand, Ramnaresh Sarwan holds the record for scoring 261 not out in Kingston, 2004, while Marlon Samuels scored 260 against Bangladesh in Khulna, 2012.
This is also the highest opening score by any Kiwi captain. He broke Graham Dowling's record of 239 runs against India in 1968. It is also the fifth highest Test score by any New Zealand captain. Apart from this, he has also joined only six captains in the world, who have a score of 250+ in their name as an opener.
Latham has scored all his 12 Test centuries as an opener. He is only the second New Zealand opener after John Wright to score 12 centuries. It is also the joint fourth highest for New Zealand. Devon Conway has played only five Test matches so far and holds the record for scoring more than 50 runs in the first innings of all these Tests. Six batsmen of the world have done this before and the name of New Zealand's Bert Sutcliffe is also recorded in it. Conway has 623 runs in his name in five Tests. Sunil Gavaskar (831) and George Headley (714) are only ahead of him after five Tests. However, Conway still has one innings left.
Bangladesh's top five batsmen scored just 19 runs in the innings, which is the joint lowest. Bangladesh's top five batsmen scored just 19 runs in the 2001 Dhaka Test against Zimbabwe.
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