Follow UsWhen it rains, it pours. For a while, nobody could relate to this saying more than Tom Latham.
Last week, Latham entered the tri-series against Pakistan and South Africa with his ODI form under the scanner, having posted five single-digit scores in his previous 11 knocks. He’d averaged just 22.75 during this period and had marked the Sri Lanka ODI series with scores of 1 & 0.
His form was already poor, but things went unimaginably bad for Latham at the start of the tri-series, with him following up a three-ball duck against Pakistan with a golden duck against South Africa. Just like that, he had four ducks in the space of eight ODI knocks, and was one more duck away from equalling an unwanted all time record - that of the joint-most consecutive ducks in the format.
Well, just over a week on, that lean run feels like an eternity ago. The man who barely 10 days ago couldn’t buy a run now has a fifty and a century in the space of two games. He is the fifth New Zealander and just the third wicket-keeper batter in history to score a ton in the Champions Trophy. He’s found his touch again and looks to be back to his 2021-2022 self, where he hammered 686 runs at an average of 62.36.
And none of this might have happened had he not been put down by Shaheen Afridi on 15 in the tri-series final a few days back. Funny how sport works, eh?
Prior to this game, Latham had seven ODI hundreds to his name but this might well go down as his personal favourite, if not his best.
After being asked to bat first, New Zealand had been reduced to 73/3 in the 17th over after an uncharacteristically indifferent start from its top and middle-order. Latham, short of runs himself, had to rebuild with Will Young, a batter who was fighting for his spot in the XI and someone with not too many runs under his belt either.
It would have been easy to panic in this situation but Latham stayed true to his reputation of being an ‘iceman’ for crisis situations: he batted through till the very end, and New Zealand’s score had been stretched to 320, with 118 of these runs coming from the bat of the left-hander.
Latham’s knock on the day can be split into two parts: pre-40th over and post-40th over.
The left-hander, in the rebuilding phase till the 40th over, amassed 67 runs off 77 balls and this phase featured the Latham we’re used to seeing: unperturbed by dot balls, not looking for the boundary ropes and focused on just one thing, which is rotating the strike. 41 off Latham’s runs in this period came through 1s, 2s and 3s with the 32-year-old running as many as five 2s. This was ‘trademark’ and ‘vintage’ Latham, if you can call it that.
Even then, it is what he did in the 27 balls he faced post the 40th over that Latham would be incredibly proud of, and will make teams take note going forward in this Champions Trophy.
In the 27 balls he faced in the death overs, Latham wreaked havoc, amassing 51 runs at a strike rate of 188.9. He hit more boundaries in these 27 balls (7) than he managed in the first 77 balls of his innings.
The beauty of this acceleration was that Latham did nothing extraordinary, nor did he go out of his way to ‘force’ these runs. It was ‘smart’ batting personified, with the left-hander not just playing with the bowlers’ minds and picking out the gaps to perfection, but pulling out the deftest of touches on certain occasions to outwit Pakistan.
One such instance came on the second ball of the 49th over: Shaheen Afridi bowled a pinpoint yorker, yet somehow the left-hander managed to dig it and pierce the tiny gap on the off-side to send the ball to the boundary. Shaheen had his hands on his head after this shot, and that particular still nicely encapsulated the frustration the New Zealand Test skipper had thrust upon the hosts.
But if there was one moment that perfectly captured Latham the batter and cricketer, it was what he did at the non-striker’s end in the final over of the innings.
Having faced 102 balls in the heat, Latham barely had anything left in the tank by the time the final over came about, but he still rushed for a ‘two’ on the third ball of the final over just so that the on-fire Glenn Phillips could take strike and maximise the team’s total. It didn’t quite work out as Phillips fell the very next ball, but this was Latham in a nutshell: doing everything in his power to elevate the side, even if it means his own personal stats take a hit.
Having made the perfect start to the tournament, and having put behind the nightmare run, Latham will now hope that it pours while it’s raining.