New Zealand's Ajaz Patel wants to bat for “as long as possible” on day three against India

Mumbai (India): New Zealand left winger Ajaz Patel expressed his intention to stay at the crease for as long as possible as the third Test against India at Wankhede looks set to dominate.

Ravindra Jadeja cleaned up Matt Henry just before the end of the second day, reducing New Zealand to 171/9 with a lead of 143 runs over the hosts.

Ajaz will enter the crease alongside Will O'Rourke to extend New Zealand's lead as much as possible. The duo will hope to score enough runs beyond India's ability to chase on a difficult surface.

The 36-year-old, who had an excellent performance with the ball, said they would try to stay as long as possible and wait for the surface to dry out, which would give them an advantage to exploit Indian batsmen with spin.

“Whether it’s the rolling or whether it’s the heat and the wicket drying out over the course of the day, I’m not sure. So it will be interesting to see how this wicket plays tomorrow morning and whether it reacts in any way the same way or whether it is a little bit different,” Ajaz said, according to ESPNcricinfo.

“So yeah, I guess it's definitely the case that in the morning when it's not doing that much, you try to beat it as long as possible so we can wait for it to dry out and start spinning again” , he added.

His opposite number Ravichandran Ashwin, on the other hand, will be hoping to get to the final wicket as soon as possible before the chase becomes a challenging affair.

“Hopefully not many. We should finish it off with a run or two here and there. All the runs saved in this innings will be much more important for us if we make it,” said Ashwin.

The veteran spinner also admitted that the Indian batsmen need to step up to avoid defeat and said, “It won't be easy, we have to bat really well. I expected a lot more bounce and speed from this Mumbai.” It was quite slow, which is a surprise for me. It's not a typical Bombay pitch, but it's a lot slower than usual.

This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without any modifications to the text.