Converting blandness into excellence, a Tom Latham masterclass

Tom Latham batted for more than 11-and-a-half-hours, and played out 489 balls, but for the majority of that time, and for most of those deliveries, Sri Lanka were convinced they had bigger problems.

At the beginning of the New Zealand innings, on day two, it had been Jeet Raval that worried them. Raval who sent the third ball he faced screaming through extra cover. Raval who socked Suranga Lakmal down the ground, and sent another straight drive purring past the feet of bowler Kasun Rajitha. While he skipped along to 30 off 45 balls looking very much like the opener who might drive the New Zealand innings forward, prompting mid-pitch discussions between Dinesh Chandimal and his bowlers, Latham puttered away with a strike rate of roughly 20.

Number of fours off Latham's first 85 deliveries? Just two. Leaves? Blocks? Forward defences? Yes, please.

When Kane Williamson is the next man in, the opposition's attention naturally shifts toward him. When he hits three fours off his first three balls - two of those boundaries sent whistling past point - his batting partners may as well vanish entirely. Sri Lanka fiddled constantly with their fields when Williamson was on strike. They moved point finer and squared gully up. Fielders were forever suggesting to bowlers how they might slow the flow of runs, or how they might lay a trap, or at the very least get him to crack a grimace, all of which is near impossible when Williamson is in full-on batting automation mode.

Then Latham came back on strike, and everybody sort of exhaled. Ah, good old Latham. Twenty-eight off 103. Most memorable shot so far? Uh, has he played any? Let's look at the wagon wheel. Oh yeah, there was that leg-side flick.

Every batsman who subsequently arrived appeared to be bringing all of the personality. Ross Taylor played both crashing drives and delicate paddle sweeps, ironsmith and artisan within the same innings. Then, as the established left-hander was refusing to produce the pretty strokes, Henry Nicholls took it upon himself to make the Basin Reserve gasp in admiration, a stereotypically graceful leftie's off drive here, a serene pull shot there, a languid jaunt down the pitch and swish, the spinner spins around on his toes, watches ball sail overhead to the boundary.

With Colin de Grandhomme, Sri Lanka went looking for trouble. They stacked the leg side and aimed balls at his nose. Two of those disappeared over fine leg's head, and another went over deep square.

Latham watched all of this, and thought: "No. I'm happy down this end, away from the spotlight, thank you." So surreptitious was his advance, that the main reminder he was batting was the constant flashing of his name on the scoreboard, which you looked up to and noticed, oh - he's added 20 more runs. So unmemorable were huge swathes of this knock, that if this innings had committed a crime, the victim would fail to pick it out from a police line-up.

Only on the evening of day three, when Latham's innings had grown truly gargantuan, and he was charging up the biggest scores for New Zealand list, did this monumental effort give off a sense of personality. Batting with the tail, Latham was suddenly energised seeking out boundaries for the first time in five sessions. Tantalising possibilities had taken shape. How far he will get up the New Zealand list, you wondered. Sixth, as it turned out. Will he carry his bat? Yes, and he became the first New Zealand batsman since 1972 to achieve this.

The best statistical nugget from the whole thing, though, serves our hero's batting character perfectly. Latham's 264 not out is the highest-ever score from a batsman who has carried his bat, beating the previous record of 244 from none other than Alastair Cook. Which really puts this innings into perspective, doesn't it? In producing this epically non-descript innings, Latham has out-blanded maybe the greatest purveyor of batting blandery the planet has ever seen.

Typically, it was not Latham, but the opposition bowling coach Rumesh Ratnayake, who provided the most colourful summation of the knock:

"The beauty of Latham's innings was that he scored 100 then started leaving the ball again, and didn't play any rash strokes," Ramanayake said. "Only when he was 250 did he go over the top. That was a good lesson in itself. He showed maturity and it was an exceptional knock. It wasn't flamboyant but it was a classy innings."

Ranking by charisma is of course no fair way to judge an innings by a New Zealand opener. For decades, this has been one of the toughest places to face the new ball, and blandness here can often mean excellence. Latham can reflect that he didn't get out hooking the ball before lunch as Raval did, or slap a nothing-ball to square leg as Williamson had done, or misread the drift as he danced down the pitch to hole out to long-on, like Nicholls.

He flew happily under the radar, and while Sri Lanka were firing missiles at the fighter jets and trying to gun down the fancy electronic warfare craft, this old-fashioned, unnoticed B-52 had dropped its massive payload, knocked out their entire infrastructure, and left them on the brink of a giant defeat.