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Southerner wrote: Been a few NZ'ers play club cricket in Oz - WA has had a few over the years from memory

Certainly have mate Brendon Bracewell was chosen for a Test match for NZ at the Gabba in 80/81 straight out of WACA Grade Cricket.
A couple of others were Luke Ronchi, Daryl Mitchell, Aaron Redmond, Dean Brownlee might be a couple of others.

Jeff Crowe for the SA state team

Southerner wrote: Jeff Crowe for the SA state team

Richard Hadlee had a season playing for TAS from memory too mate.

Definitely a day for winning the toss and batting with the temperature tipped to soar into the 40s. Australia are unchanged and for NZ it will be a matter of whether Boult is fit enough. If not Lockie Ferguson could make his test debut and having watched him in limited overs cricket he could make life a bit uncomfortable for our batsmen with his speed. Overall I think it will be a very competitive series between 2 evenly matched sides. I think the home ground advantage may see Australia over the line but it wouldn't surprise me if it went the other way.
It will be a bit sombre today as the players pay tribute to the victims of that terrible volcano eruption a few days ago.

Good test for both sides mikeh...NZ have played some good cricket the last few years, whilst Aust are finding their feet post Sandpapergate...with it being a night game and WA has no day light savings, surely the heat won't be unbearable for too long...

Lot of talk the Kiwis will play De Grandhomme over Santner and bring in Boult for Mitchell....but agree Fergusson needs to play....definitely has some zip that's for sure...

Good toss to win....hopefully the Aust batsmen can make it count and go big....time will tell.

The Black Caps have ran over a BlackCat.The calf injury to Ferguson puts the Kiwi bowlers under enormous pressure.
Great Day 1 of Optus Oval Test Cricket Day/Night.. Labuschange well done in extreme heat with the Twilight swinging ball.

A very competitive day of test cricket. Great toss for Paine to win but the Kiwis made the home team earn every run. They stuck to their task in the heat and bowled to a plan for every batsman, peppering Labuschagne and Smith with short stuff which eventually did the trick for Smith who lost patience and played a poor shot. To be honest he looked scratchy for his whole innings and he should have been caught at 20. Only Labuschagne and Warner played with any fluency which made me wonder if the Aussie bowlers may give the New Zealanders similar headaches sometime tomorrow. The Kiwis were unlucky to lose Ferguson and it was wretched luck for the debutant but they showed a lot of grit to restrict the batsmen. Apart from the drop off Smith their fielding was outstanding and Wagners caught and bowled to send Warner back was top shelf.

I have to give Langer credit in that he saw something in Labuschagne when no one else did. 12 months ago he was nowhere near being a test class batsman, but clearly he has worked his socks off ( as well as imitating the "laser leave" and a number of others of Smiths idiosyncrancies)
The day 2 plan for Australia is quite simple. Bat for as long as possible in the natural light ( and heat), get as close as possible to 400, then expose the NZ batsmen to Starc and Company under the floodlights.

No surprise for me to see the Kiwis fine bowling and fielding display yesterday, they are no.2 in the world currently for a reason.
They were very disciplined with their line and length in searing heat that they would not be accustomed to and Williamson's field placements really stifled and frustrated the Aussie batsmen especially Smith who looked completely out of sorts although he still was able to hang in for 160 odd balls.
Losing Boult before the toss and now debutant Ferguson possibly hasnt made it easy for NZ but Wagner just runs in all day along with Southee with support from DeGrandhomme and all were able to swing the ball for virtually the whole day, whilst Santner even got a few to turn quite sharply on Day 1.

NZ bowled pretty well to Smith - he's been examined via video now and teams have worked out a few things with that technique and where not to bowl to it.