Missed Opportunities Haunt Ronchi as NZ Endures Another Rough Day

New Zealand had a tough day in Galle, to say the least. Everything seemed to go wrong for them, except for the weather, which at least provided some relief with its persistent overcast conditions. It was a day of extreme challenges and hardships, testing their resilience to the limit.

Sri Lanka piled on 296 runs for just the loss of two wickets, while every plan, every thought, every effort New Zealand put forth, came to pretty much nought. They tried seven different bowlers, even giving Daryl Mitchell a run, while their spinners toiled largely fruitlessly for 124.4 overs, before the declaration came. Only Glenn Phillips managed to cause any sort of trouble.

In that sense, while Dhananjaya de Silva has been fortunate with his tosses, none of the six he's won on the trot might have been as important as this one, with batting conditions easing up considerably on day two and allowing Sri Lanka's batters to run roughshod over proceedings.

"The surface is different. I think looking at it, just it looks dryer than the first Test that we played, and it's just that bit harder," New Zealand batting coach Luke Ronchi said after the day's play. "So, once the batters are in it's a nice surface. The ball gets that little bit older as well, and it makes it different."

These were sentiments echoed by Angelo Mathews as well, who was one of four Sri Lankan batters to pass fifty. Ronchi was also quick to give credit where it was due, praising the Sri Lankan batters, but nevertheless rued the missed opportunities on day one.

"I think when you look at the bowlers, they toiled really hard, they tried different plans, different sort of tactics, to try and produce some chances, and when we did we unfortunately missed them. But that's just part of cricket. I think if we look back, the guys would have preferred to have taken some of them but it's just what happens.

"But there weren't as many today as there were yesterday. And Sri Lankans of course batted beautifully."

As for how to approach the rest of the game, Ronchi said the plan would be to not look too far ahead. New Zealand are still 580 runs adrift, having lost two wickets in the final 45 minutes of play their batters had to negotiate. Compounding matters is the fact that New Zealand's highest total ever in Galle is 340 - in the last Test.

"Now, as a batting group, it's making sure we can apply ourselves," Ronchi said. "We did that in the first Test, so we need to sort of back our plans and our processes and the work we've done.

"That's something we've done really well for a number of years. It's not about looking at an end-product type thing, but the processes and how we're going to make the best of each ball, each moment and each partnership.

"So the batters know their process and how they go about scoring runs, what they want to do and how they want to put pressure on the bowlers."

More importantly, said Ronchi, it's about taking the game as deep as possible.

"You just want to just go out there and bat, and bat for as long as we can as well. That's a massive part of what's going to happen. There's three days left, so we've got to make sure that we can bat well and sort of see what happens."