England were reeling at 21 for 3 when Harry Brook walked out to bat to join Joe Root in the middle on Day 1 of the second Test against New Zealand in Wellington. With the wickets of Zak Crawley (2), Ben Duckett (9), and Ollie Pope (10), New Zealand pacers Matt Henry and Tim Southee had their tails up. But Brook showed no sign of nerves. He got off the mark with a clip off his pads in his second delivery. His first boundary came off his fifth delivery. Matt Henry found the outside edge of his bat but it went through the slip cordon. How New Zealand would hope that it had gone to one of the catchers. Since then it was the Brook show all the way.
In the next over, the talented right-hander hit a hat-trick of fours off Southee. He made his intentions clear by skipping down the track for the third boundary.
Brook was Player of the Match in the first Test with back-to-back half-centuries to help England to a 267-run win.
With a dazzling display of strokeplay, Brook broke former India batter Vinod Kambli’s 30-year-old world record for scoring the most runs after 9 Test innings. He became the first player to score 800 or more runs in his first nine Test innings. Kambli held the record previously with 798 runs in his first nine Test innings. He had four centuries including two double hundreds.
Brook also went past legends like Herbert Sutcliffe (780 runs in nine innings), Sunil Gavaskar (778 runs in nine innings) and Everton Weekes (777 runs in nine innings).
