 Justin Greaves was the man of the moment as he batted 388 deliveries to score unbeaten 202 and save the Test for the visitors.Meanwhile, Justin Greaves created history after the remarkable knock. Justin Greaves became the first player in the world to score a double hundred in the fourth innings of a Test while batting at No.6 or lower. The previous best score at that position was registered by Ben Stokes, who made 155, against Australia at Lord’s.
Justin Greaves also became the seventh player to score a double hundred in the fourth innings after George Headley vs ENG (1930), Bill Edrich vs SA (1939), Sunil Gavaskar vs ENG (1979), Gordon Greenidge vs ENG (1984), Nathan Astle vs ENG (2002), Kyle Mayers vs BAN (2021), Justin Greaves vs NZ (2025)*.
The Test was the third instance of a team drawing the game when given a 500 + run target. England drawing against Australia at MCG in 1946 and Pakistan saving the Test against Australia in Karachi in 2021 were the other two Tests where teams escaped a defeat while chasing 500+ run totals. West Indies pulled off a remarkable draw in the first Test against the New Zealand in Christchurch. Set a target of 531, the West Indies batted 163 overs in the fourth innings to secure a draw.
Earlier, Shai Hope scored 140 to keep West Indies alive in the game. Hope was out early on Day 5, but Justin Greaves held fort and, with Kemar Roach, who made a vital contribution of 58, but more importantly played 233 deliveries to save the Test for the West Indies. The remarkable draw made the world realise why the West Indies is important for cricket. They may get bundled out for low scores, but every now and then, they’ll bring out performances across formats that will stun everyone.
Day 5 : Justin Greaves 202* leads West Indies to improbable historic draw in Christchurch on Day 5
The numbers tell you what happened. Justin Greaves and No.8 Kemar Roach battled undefeated for 409 balls, a 180-run stand of pure defiance, a record for the seventh wicket surpassing the efforts of Sachin Tendulkar and Manoj Prabhakar from 35 years ago. At 163.3 overs, this was the longest fourth innings for the West Indies since 1930.
Their total of 457 for 6 was also the highest fourth-innings total ever in a time-bound Test. Greaves alone batted for 564 minutes and 388 balls, 201 of which came in a stand of 196 with Shai Hope, who scored 140 while battling an eye infection.
But numbers can’t quite capture the texture of the way this game unfolded on the final day, the way improbability gave way to possibility and then, briefly, to something wilder. At 398 for 6, needing 132 from 33 overs with four wickets standing, there was a moment before the final session got underway when the outlandish seemed almost reasonable. Chase it down? Why not? But Justin Greaves and Roach chose sense over theatre, hunkered down, and batted New Zealand into exhaustion.
By this stage, Tom Latham’s side was cooked. Two days of toil will do that. Two frontline seamers – Matt Henry, Nathan Smith – gone to injury will do that. All three reviews burned before the final session will definitely do that. They were left to appeal and hope, appeal and watch the umpire’s head shake, appeal again because what else was there to do?
On another day, with a review or two in hand, one of the two chances Michael Bracewell created in the final session – an LBW and a caught behind against Roach – results in a dismissal and opens up the tail and this becomes a very different story. But this day belonged to fortune meeting guts.
Both sides had the latter – Bracewell bowled 55 overs of off-spin on a fifth day track offering little, while the two standing seamers, Zakary Foulkes and Jacob Duffy, sent down 76 second-innings overs between them and still had something left in the tank when the third new ball was available with four overs in the day remaining. West Indies just had more of the fortune.
It didn’t seem that way at the start of the final day, when 90 overs stretched out like an eternity even against a depleted attack. But Hope and Justin Greaves, overnight centurion and overnight partner, saw off the first hour without incident and added 55 runs for good measure. It was the kind of batting that makes you think, well, maybe…
Then came the third over after drinks, and the maybe disappeared. Duffy’s short-ball ploy finally found reward. After 239 balls of concentration, Hope’s pull shot hung in the air just long enough for Latham to stretch and pouch it behind the stumps.
From the other end, Foulkes trapped Tevin Imlach LBW shortly after with a nip-backer and suddenly West Indies were staring at seven overs until Lunch plus two full sessions with victory 253 runs away and four wickets standing. The immediate numeric of concern, though, was that Greaves sat on 97, three short of a second Test century. He got there in the first over after Lunch, whipping Bracewell past square leg for a single. It brought momentary relief, but then he was back on his rescue mission.
What followed was New Zealand trying everything and nothing quite working. They burned a review on Roach, an LBW appeal off Bracewell where the ball pitched fractionally outside leg.
They also dropped Roach on 30, then again on 47, both times off Bracewell, both times costly. The partnership grew and 29 overs between Lunch and Tea, 104 runs added, and by the time the final session began, New Zealand’s body language told you everything. Fielders threw sloppily. Shoulders sagged. The kind of weariness that comes from knowing you’ve done everything right except the one thing that matters.
The final session should have been theirs. Roach, on 53 after getting to his maiden Test fifty in a 16-year career, was beaten by Bracewell’s turn while stretching forward. Umpire Alex Wharf gave it not out. New Zealand would have won the review. They didn’t have one. Still on the same score, Roach then feathered an edge to the ‘keeper. Not given. And still no reviews were left.
Roach stayed on 53 for 72 balls, deadbatting everything, while New Zealand fed Justin Greaves the single early in overs, trying to isolate the tail-ender. But Roach wasn’t playing like a tail-ender. He was playing like an 85-Test veteran who understood what this meant. Greaves began cramping in the final ten overs as he neared that double hundred; all that effort, all that tension finally manifesting.
With a West Indian win out of the question, New Zealand crowded the bat, attacked with close-in fielders and threw everything they had left. On another day, it would have worked. On this most spectacular day, the opposition refused to budge and a Test match in New Zealand ended in a draw for the first time since 2020.
Presentations and Road Ahead
Tom Latham the NZ skipper said : It had it all, really. The way we were able to put ourselves in a position to win a Test match was what we were after, and for it to head down to the final hour with all three results on the cards – it was a great Test match to be involved in. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to get the breakthroughs we wanted to put some pressure on that lower order.
We managed to create enough opportunities, just unfortunately weren’t able to take them. (On losing Nathan Smith and Matt Henry) It’s obvious how big the loss of Nathan Smith and Matt Henry was. As you said, when two of your seamers go down during a Test match, it’s never ideal.
The work that Zach and Jacob put in throughout that innings – the amount of overs they bowled, the way they kept coming, never complained, just got on with it and threw everything they could at the West Indies. And also Michael Bracewell bowled fifty-odd overs.
Roston Chase the WI skipper said : Feels lovely, first points for us in the Test Championship, happy to get off the mark. Very happy for Justin Greaves. Also, really happy for Roach as he played brilliantly on return to Test cricket.
After the tea interval, I thought we could have probably looked to push for it from there, but the batsmen weren’t too keen on it. They just wanted to bat, and if they batted normally and got us close coming down to the end, they would have taken a bit of a look at it.
But it didn’t happen. As I said, we’re happy with what the guys did. It was a beautiful innings to watch by those two (Greaves and Kemar Roach), and we’re proud. (On Shai Hope) That was lovely as well. So much has happened today that I forgot about Shai Hope, actually.
He came off the India tour with some good form, and he’s come in here now showing what he’s worth. Especially being a great player in the ODIs and the T20Is, he’s showing his class in the red-ball format. We know how great a player he is, so I’m happy for him as well. (On the next Test match) We’ve come close to winning the Test match with these guys in their conditions.
But I think in the first-innings batting we have to dig a bit deeper because the conditions are a lot tougher with the greenness and the grass and the bounce in the wicket early on. If we could score a bit more – probably around 300 – I think that would do us good because we see all the wickets flatten out over here and it becomes a batting paradise.
If we can turn that up a bit in the first innings with the bat, the bowlers are doing an excellent job in terms of testing the techniques up front. We have what it takes to restrict them; it’s just for us to get that lead early.
Justin Greaves Player of the Match for his 202* runs said : I’ll just say pretty much resilient. It’s a word that we’ve thrown around in the dressing room a lot. So for me to be there at the end, you know, was really important. So anything for the team at the end of the day. And you can look at me.
Special, special day for me. Special day for the team. We were pretty much up against it. So, to come out here about a whole day, after losing Shai, we thought we would have probably pushed for a win. But then, with Kemar, the senior pro, getting me all the way. Pretty much happy for him being there at the end as well. A really, really special day for us as a group. I had a long chat with coach Floyd Reifer and he was saying, once you get in, stay in, it’s a good pitch.
There is a particular kind of Test match that starts ordinary, meanders into the desperate, and ends somewhere between the miraculous and the bloody-minded. This was one of those. Justin Greaves made an incredible 202* on the final day of the Christchurch Test, an innings that began as rescue and ended as refusal, and West Indies – who had been 100 for 2 and then 167 all out in the first innings, who were asked to make 530 or survive two days – drew a Test match that by all logic should have been lost much earlier.
This is what Test cricket is truly about – giving it your all and fighting till the end. It’s an examination of patience, perseverence and determination and the Windies came out with flying colours on all fronts. They have got off the mark in the WTC cycle and have got some important points in their bag with this draw.
The pitch did flatten out in the fourth innings and that helped the visitor’s cause but we can take nothing away from Shai Hope, Justin Greaves and Kemar Roach – all three of them were remarkable in the way they batted. The Kiwis tried different tacticts against Greaves and Roach but they had answers to everything. So, just a three-day turnover for the next Test at Wellington.