Never say never as Bond chases Test berth

He didn't quite come to the Adelaide Oval with a smoking gun, but Shane Bond has thrown his hat into the ring for New Zealand Test selection nonetheless with an impressive performance late on the third day of the tour match against South Australia today. By stumps, the South Australians had been reduced to a second innings score of 4/130 after they had earlier conceded a narrow deficit on the first.

Bond (2/30), vying with fellow pacemen Daryl Tuffey (0/6) and Chris Martin (0/26) for a vacant Test fast bowling slot, had been forced to watch the action from the sidelines for most of the day as his team patiently chiselled out a 17-run first innings lead.

But, when his chance arrived, he seized it with both hands. He induced David Fitzgerald (0) to chop the very first delivery of the Redbacks' innings back into the stumps, and then rattled the castle of Shane Deitz (8) eight overs later with a classical yorker. He was bowling down-breeze on a blustery day in Adelaide - and television replays suggested both scalps had been obtained from no balls - but there was no denying the strength of his impression. He developed excellent pace and maintained disciplined line and length in each of two spells.

Admittedly, Tuffey also bowled well and the spinning prowess of Daniel Vettori (2/43) continued to make life difficult for the batsmen too. But, as the Redbacks were led most of the way to stumps by the experienced pairing of Greg Blewett (61) and Darren Lehmann (51), there was no member of the attack more impressive than the 26-year old right armer.

Earlier, Tuffey (56) had made a decisive impact of his own with the bat in the course of New Zealand's progression to a first innings total of 314. Around more than two sessions of vigilant batting from the Kiwis, the powerfully-built right hander added some much-needed aggression to his team's innings in the lead-up to tea, clubbing two glorious sixes over mid wicket and slamming several inside-out drives over the off side on the way to only the third half-century of his first-class career.

Therein, he matched the standards of attacking entertainment that had been established by Adam Parore (48) before lunch, and had nearly even overhauled top scorer Lou Vincent (74) by the end of his cameo effort.

Vincent, for his own part, again played well, but the exuberance that bubbled over into his play yesterday wasn't quite replicated. Before he played a delivery from fiery left arm paceman Mark Harrity (2/22) back into his stumps shortly after lunch, he remained keen to play off the front foot and unfurled more of his flourishing and technically correct strokes. But he was also tied down for long periods, never more so than at the outset of the day when the nagging accuracy of pace bowlers Mike Smith (1/38) and Paul Rofe (0/29) kept the accumulation of runs to a premium.

The opening 31 deliveries of the day from impressive youngster Rofe were all dot balls, and just three runs were taken from his first 37 in total.

At the other end of the day, Vettori also shut down the scoring rate when he lured Blewett into driving a catch to mid on and Lehmann into lobbing back a caught and bowled chance from the final ball before stumps.

It all helped to bookend a generally laboured day of batting from both teams.