Ronchi ton gives New Zealand selection dilemma

New Zealanders 324 (Latham 55, Williamson 50) and 235 (Ronchi 107, Watling 43) drew with Mumbai 464 for 8 dec (Yadav 103, Pawar 100, Lad 100)Scorecard

Luke Ronchi and Martin Guptill combined to give the New Zealand team management a selection headache sooner than they would have anticipated. While Guptill followed up his first-innings failure with a duck, Ronchi scored a blistering century on the last day of the tour match against Mumbai on a pitch that had begun to misbehave.

It will be a dramatic move if a batsman who has opened only three times in first-class cricket replaces an opener in whom New Zealand have invested, but if there ever was a time and place to do so, it might be this. Guptill averages 29.59, which drops to 20.68 in Tests in Asia. He can be sensational in limited-overs cricket, but Tests and spin have not been his best friends. For a non-opener to convert to that position, there can be no better place than Asia. Opening the innings is often the best time to bat before the ball begins to turn or reverse swing, or is too soft to travel.

Just like his three previous forays to the top of the order, all for Western Australia before he moved to New Zealand, Ronchi got that chance in the second innings of the three-day warm-up game. Mumbai declared as soon as Siddhesh Lad reached his century, the third batsman to do so for the side, and Ronchi then walked out with Guptill, the only specialist batsman who did not get a long hit in the first innings. By now the flat pitch had dried out and was offering turn and some variable bounce, enough for Mumbai to open with the left-arm spin of Vishal Dabholkar.

Yet Guptill can’t blame the pitch for his dismissal. In Dabholkar’s first over, the batsman edged a …

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