The current New Zealand cricket team are no doubt carrying on the legacy of their past masters with as much pride and passion and unending enthusiasm as their predecessors did.

For a country consisting of two islands and with a sparsely populated four and half million inhabitants, it has over the years experienced memorable moments in sports, be it rugby, cricket, athletics or sailing there have always been men and women who excelled and brought honour to their country.

More than often their world beating ‘All Blacks’ rugby team has done them proud by winning World Cups while in sailing they have won the America’s Cup which must have been their happiest moment. Not forgetting Snell, their sprinter, who was one the finest athlete that graced the Olympic tracks.

And it was a New Zealander from Auckland, Sir Edmund Hillary, who became the first man to climb the Mount Everest in 1953 along the Sherpa Tenzing Norgay.

I feel privileged to have met Hillary on my 1990 tour to New Zealand with the Indian cricket team and found in him a man besotted with the game of cricket.

Cricket remains as much a part of the sporting culture today as it was in 1930 when New Zealand for the first time played in a Test match at Christchurch against England, a match which they lost by a huge margin.

The Kiwis remained a rather dormant force in the game but their interest seldom seized despite not getting any where near to achieving a Test victory which eventually came their way after 26 long years and 45 matches later when they beat the West Indies at the Eden Park in Auckland in 1955-56 by 190 runs. Their great all-rounder then was John Reid who played delightful cricket for his team.

Earlier to that, New Zealand had the embarrassment of being bowled out against England at Auckland in the 1954-55 Test for just 26 runs, the lowest ever score by any team so far in a Test.

Their cricket relations with Pakistan, however, opened up when they toured the Asian country in 1955 and provided Pakistan with their first ever series win. Their own first home win against Pakistan in a series, though, came as late as 1985. Not since have they beaten Pakistan at home or away.

The ongoing series is one huge Test for their tenacity and their nerves. Already trailing behind by a Test defeat in Abu Dhabi, The Kiwis now seem to be focused to impress and prove they are no pushovers. There is a lot more conviction in what they would like to achieve and what they are now set to prove after Tom Latham led their way with a fine century and a respectable first innings score which has put Pakistan on the back foot at the end of the second day’s play on Tuesday.

For most part of the day the Kiwi batsmen occupied the crease and made the best use of it by adding 160 more runs to their first day’s total. Not really heartening to bowl on lifeless wickets. And the Pakistan bowlers now know how tough it must have been for the New Zealand bowlers too when kept in the field for nearly two days when Pakistan batted first in the Abu Dhabi Test.

Pakistan’s fielding lapses helped too as Bradley Watling and Mark Craig added 68 runs for the seventh wicket, frustrating the bowlers for 185 minutes.

In the last hour, it was not a happy outing for the Pakistan openers Taufiq Umer and Shan Masood who are both playing a Test after a gap of more than a year. But the men in form, Younis Khan and Azhar Ali, are now at the crease and both must be aiming to continue from where they left in the first Test last week.

Published in Dawn, November 19th , 2014