Ben Smith first to score 500 for the summer

Central Districts' English import Ben Smith taught Canterbury a thing or two about professional batting on the second day of their Shell Trophy match in Christchurch today.

After Canterbury's top order men, Gary Stead excused, failed the test against the new ball yesterday, Smith scored highly for his effort today. Canterbury's mid-term report is going to make shocking reading.

CD were on 435/8 off 131 overs at the close.

Firstly with Mathew Sinclair, then Glen Sulzberger, and finally Mark Douglas, the Leicestershire strokemaker came out top of the New Zealand domestic class by the close. He added consecutively 116, 121 and 77 for the third, fourth and fifth wickets, as rock-bottom Canterbury were given a lesson in using a good pitch to their advantage.

Smith's innings, off 264 balls, is the second highest in New Zealand this season, and brought him up to 606 runs at 75.75 in his first year at CD.

Coach Dipak Patel was understandably ecstatic at his signing's performance, commenting, "obviously we want to get a big a lead as possible. Overall we're in a strong position. We'd like to be 250 runs ahead by the end of the day's play."

He praised Smith's "consistent" batting performance this season, adding, "I like the way he goes about scoring his runs. There's no fuss about it. He's a total professional and looks a class player."

Smith, discovered in England by Patel, modestly added " I was pleased by my innings."

A long warm day of work for Canterbury was always on the timetable, after CD began aggressively on 88/2.

Wickets were hard to come by, with Sinclair the only wicket in the morning session, caught behind for 69 off Canterbury's leading bowler this season, Stephen Cunis. Cunis also dismissed Smith caught behind the wicket, this time by Harley James at slip. His yelp of joy could be heard by a fair crowd, scattered with school children.

Canterbury,by the end of the day, faced a deficit of 215 runs. Chris Martin finished with 3/105, Cunis 2/75 and Carl Anderson 2/71. Martyn Sigley and Ewen Thompson, not known as batsmen, bullied Canterbury into submission with an eighth wicket stand of 64 in the final session.

With two days to bat out if CD declare overnight, Canterbury seem to have no hope of the victory that will extricate them from the bottom of the table, and will struggle to even draw, if they show as little application as they did in their first innings.