At the 10th wicket, 116 runs were scored by Green-Hazlewood, who were dismissed for 267 runs yesterday at the ninth wicket for Australia. Cameron Green and Josh Hazlewood’s 10th wicket partnership was supposed to last only one over. In Wellington, there was certainly hope for New Zealand to quickly dismiss the opposition and start batting.
However, that hope wasn’t fulfilled. The Green-Hazlewood partnership reached 116 runs at the last wicket, which has become stable at 31.1 overs! Green contributed an estimated 83 runs alone. Yesterday, Green remained unbeaten at 103 runs, and until the end, he remained unbeaten at 174 runs, while Hazlewood got out scoring 22 runs in 62 balls.
Such incidents of partnerships at the 10th wicket in cricket are not regular, to say the least. Let’s take a look at the number of partnerships resisting the final resistance in Green-Hazlewood’s honor:
In Test history, there are 28 instances of partnerships at the last wicket scoring 100 runs or more. It’s quite rare even over more than a year. The latest record belongs to New Zealand, where in January last year, against Pakistan in Karachi, Matt Henry and Aijaz Patel scored 104 runs.
Australia surpassed New Zealand in the list of highest partnerships at the 10th wicket. Both teams have now made six such partnerships. England leads in partnerships of 100 runs at the last wicket with five, followed by India with four, and Pakistan with three. South Africa and West Indies have two each.
The 116-run partnership between Green and Hazlewood is Australia’s fourth-highest at the last wicket. Philip Hughes and Ashton Agar’s 163 runs in 2013 at Trent Bridge is on top. Among the 28 partnerships at the last wicket, there are no repetitions in the list. However, there are two players who have been part of multiple such partnerships—Australia’s Glenn McGrath and New Zealand’s Nathan Astle.
In 2004, McGrath partnered with Jason Gillespie against New Zealand in Brisbane, scoring 114 runs. The following year, he was involved in a 107-run partnership at the last wicket against South Africa in Melbourne. Astle’s two partnerships came within a span of five years. In 1997 against England in Auckland, he was unbeaten at 106 runs with Danny Morrison, and in 2002 in Christchurch, he was part of a 118-run partnership at the last wicket. Chris Cairns, a batting partner of Astle, is somewhat surprising in the list. He was New Zealand’s premier all-rounder but batted only once at number 11. That partnership at the 10th wicket in the fourth innings remains his only instance.
There have been three partnerships of unbeaten 100 runs at the last wicket. In 1980, England’s Peter Willey and Bob Willis (117*) resisted against West Indies in Oval, in 1997, Australia’s Astle-Morrison (106*) faced England, and in 2010, South Africa’s AB de Villiers and Vernon Philander (107*) defied Pakistan in Abu Dhabi.
Test cricket has not witnessed a partnership of 200 runs at the 10th wicket yet. It’s just a matter of time. In 2014, against India at Trent Bridge, England’s Joe Root and James Anderson stood at 198 runs.
