Stats – Kane Williamson's fab fourth-innings feats
Also, the Christchurch thriller was only the second instance of a team reaching their target on the final ball of a Test match
Sampath Bandarupalli13-Mar-20230 – Balls remaining when New Zealand reached their target against Sri Lanka in Christchurch. This was only the second instance of a team reaching their target on the final ball of a Test match. England completed their chase of 128 against South Africa in Durban in 1948 on the last possible ball of the Test. England needed eight runs to win in the final over (eight-ball overs were in effect), which they achieved with a leg bye on the last ball.
3 – Test wins for New Zealand with a margin of two or fewer wickets, including this result. They defeated West Indies by one wicket in 1980 in Dunedin and won by two wickets against Pakistan at the same venue five years later. This is also the first time Sri Lanka lost a Test match by a margin of two or fewer wickets.4 – Fourth-innings hundreds for Kane Williamson in Test cricket, the joint-second most by any batter in this format. Younis Khan leads the list with five fourth-innings tons, while four other batters have four centuries each – Sunil Gavaskar, Ricky Ponting, Ramnaresh Sarwan and Graeme Smith.Related
-
Revitalised Williamson returns to scene of his debut heroics ready for fresh IPL challenge
-
If you need someone to scramble, who better than Kane Williamson?
-
Kane Williamson, Daryl Mitchell star in New Zealand's Christchurch heist
-
Ball-by-ball – Williamson slides, Wagner hobbles, NZ beat SL
-
Reactions – 'Heart in the throat stuff!'
3 – Number of hundreds out of Williamson’s four in the fourth innings of a Test match to have come in successful chases. Only Graeme Smith has more – all his four fourth-innings centuries resulted in wins, while Ricky Ponting also has three.55.31 – Williamson’s fourth-innings average in Test cricket. Only three batters with 750-plus runs in the fourth innings have a higher average. Williamson has scored 885 runs with four centuries and four fifties across the 23 times he has batted in the fourth innings.ESPNcricinfo Ltd285 – New Zealand’s target at the Hagley Oval, their third-highest successful chase in Test cricket. New Zealand’s highest chase was 324 against Pakistan in 1994, at Lancaster Park in Christchurch, followed by a 317-run chase against Bangladesh in 2008 in Chattogram. The 285-run chase is also the fourth-highest successful chase for a team in New Zealand.3 – Number of higher targets successfully chased against Sri Lanka in Test cricket than New Zealand’s 285-run chase here. All those were chases of 300-run-plus targets by Pakistan, including a 342-run target last year in Galle.4052 – Test runs for Williamson in New Zealand. He is the only batter with 4000-plus Test runs for New Zealand at home. His average of 64.31 is the fourth-highest for any batter to have scored 4000 Test runs at home.