Three days at Hagley Park

New Zealand v England, Second Test, Hagley Oval, 30 March 2018

Scorecard

Here’s a tip. If you are in a taxi to the airport at 5 30 am, on no account tell your Chinese driver that you are going to the cricket. That way you will avoid passing the entire journey being interrogated on the differences between the game’s three formats. I fear that my powers of exposition were well below peak at that time of the day, a hapless witness, quickly broken down by a merciless prosecutor.

I was off to Christchurch for the first three days of the second test. As we flew over the central city, the effects of the devastation wrought by the 2011 earthquake remain clear to see. Substantial tracts of the CBD are levelled, with some buildings still to come down. We saw Lancaster Park, the home of Canterbury rugby and cricket for more than a century, now a desolate memorial, shortly to be demolished, including the massive Deans Stand, recently opened when the earthquake struck, with some seats that were never sat on by spectators.

Cricket was in the process of moving the domestic game to Hagley Park before the earthquake. After it, plans were expanded so that it could accommodate internationals as well. It reminds me of Mote Park, Maidstone, also a tree-lined ground with a grass bank around much of the boundary, set in one corner of a large park (and with rugby pitches adjacent).

My seat was in the temporary stand that was divided into sections named after notable Canterbury cricketers: Congdon, Dowling, Hastings, Pollard, Murdoch, Hockley. The latter two are former captains of the national women’s team, and both have been fine additions to the New Zealand Sky commentary team this season, particularly Hockley, who has a good line in punchy astuteness. The choice of Vic Pollard may have been a gaffe, given that the test embraced Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Pollard wouldn’t play on any Sunday for religious reasons.

England were put in by Williamson, in the hope of exploiting some early greenness. Cook got a cracker from Boult early on, swinging late to take his off stump. His footwork was a little laggardly—perhaps a season on Strictly Come Dancing is what he needs—but it was the quality of the bowling that exposed it. As the technology has become more forensic, analysis has tended to explain dismissals in terms of flawed batting. Alistair McGowan once did a sketch as Alan Hansen in which he explained some of football’s greatest goals purely in terms of defensive error. Sometimes the bowling is simply better.

James Vince gave us another of his butterfly innings, beautiful but brief. Joe Root’s innings was similar but a bit longer, and classier. His bat seemed to have nothing but middle until he lost concentration and was bowled by Southee. Malan got a testing delivery first ball before his feet were moving, then Stoneham became the third wicket to fall with only one run added. His was one of those curious innings where it might have been better for his reputation had he got out early, the auto-navigator determinedly directing him away from his comfort zone throughout.   

Ben Stokes batted as he had at the ODI in Wellington, and as he lives life in general these days, with caution suppressing his natural instincts, until just after lunch he gave it away with a legside flick caught behind, a popular way of getting out in this series.

Stuart Broad batted as if being No 8 was a responsibility that he wanted to divest himself of as soon as possible, which brought in Mark Wood, returning to the test team for Overton, to support Jonny Bairstow. New Zealand followed the irritating practice of trying to get Bairstow off strike and Wood on it. What’s more, this continued well beyond the point when it became clear that Wood was striking the ball well and there was a case for doing it the other way round. I still don’t understand why, when you only have two or three wickets to take, you would stop trying to get one batsman out.

Bairstow was superb. He has been England’s best batsman on the New Zealand tour. His innings started in retrenchment then moved to accumulation then attack. He moved up through the gears as smoothly as Lewis Hamilton and reached his century early on the second morning.

It didn’t help that New Zealand’s DRS challenges had both been frittered away by the 34^th over. For a young man whose reputation is built upon rationality and common sense, the way Kane Williamson’s eyes light up at the chance of a punt on the lamest of nags in this respect is odd.

As has been widely advertised, all the first innings wickets for both sides fell to the opening bowlers. This series has provided an opportunity to see the finest pair of opening bowlers that both these teams have had. Of course, Richard Hadlee was New Zealand’s best quicker bowler and he was well-supported, most notably by Ewen Chatfield, but Graham Gooch was not over-hyperbolic when he described New Zealand’s attack in the Hadlee era as World XI at one end and Ilford Seconds at the other.

Trueman and Statham will be a popular alternative for England. Both were probably better bowlers than Anderson and Broad as individuals, but didn’t bowl as a combination as often as people think. They took the new ball together in every test of only two series: South Africa at home in 1960 and Australia away in 1962/3. Of course, if Trueman had been picked as often as Trueman thought he should have been, it would have been many more. Conversely, had the selectorial conventions of the fifties and sixties still been in place, Anderson and Broad would not have played so much. Then, it was very unusual to pick more than two quick bowlers, plus an all-rounder. The definition of “quick” was looser too, embracing the likes of Derek Shackleton, an upright, shopping-basket-on-the-handlebars type of bowler (this definition of “quick” is still in use in Kent—see Stevens, D).

Broad and Anderson were far too good for the New Zealand top order on the second morning. It was 36 for five just after lunch. Williamson was the fifth, following the fashion by flicking down the legside. He has had another fine season, but has got out to shots he shouldn’t have more often than a player that good has the right to.

BJ Watling is the most underestimated player in world cricket, probably because he plays tests only, and New Zealand play so few of those. Here is a player who has twice participated in world-record-breaking test partnerships for the seventh wicket, and another of 200-plus. By definition, large partnerships this low down the order begin in adversity. He is to a broken innings what Mary Portas is to a failing shop.

Here he had an unlikely ally in Colin de Grandhomme. Regular readers will know that, much as I enjoy de Grandhomme’s cavalier batting in shorter forms, I haven’t seen him as a test all-rounder. Now he played a roundhead innings, the type of which I did not think him capable. What a pleasure to be proved wrong. He was offered plenty of temptation early on, mostly in the form of short stuff from Mark Wood. He took it on, hooking three fours in the second over he faced, but with judicious selection of balls that he could keep down. England would have done better to test him with full-length deliveries on off stump.

De Grandhomme’s 72 was his best test innings. Unlike his hundred at the Basin against he West Indies in December, it was made in adversity and took more than double the number of deliveries of that innings. He and Watling put on 142 for the sixth wicket, a record for New Zealand against England.

There was an impatience about Root’s captaincy that was to be even more evident later in the closing overs of the match. Graeme Swann was reported as complaining that Root meddled too much with Jack Leach’s fields, an impediment to the bowler settling (though Leach looked a genuine test spinner). The England captain is a one-man Flat Earth Society in terms of the inexhaustible number of questionable theories that he has.

Southee came in with a considerable England lead still in prospect. Ten years ago, almost to the day, Southee slogged his way to an unbeaten 77 as New Zealand went down in the final test of the series, in Napier. That remains his highest test score and it might have been the worst thing that could have happened to his batting as has tried to emulate it almost every time he has gone to the crease.

So it began here, as if Southee was in a private contest with Broad to see who could be the most reckless No 8 in cricket. He began the third day with a six off the third ball (which should have a double value for interrupting Jerusalem—see below) but these days he runs a basic risk assessment over the delivery before deciding whether of not to slog. The six, I learn from CricInfo, took him into the top twenty of the six-hitting list for tests for all countries, the Arthur Wellard of our age.

Southee went for 50, leaving Wagner and Boult to stage an anarchic last-wicket partnership (there is no other kind of any significant duration) of 39, including Wagner’s emulation of Botham’s no-look hooked six of Old Trafford ’81. From 36 for five, the deficit had been reduced to an insignficant 29.

Alistair Cook went early, caught behind off Boult. It has been denied since, but when he walked off, was it for the last time as a test batsman? Might he think, as he tends the young lambs, that he has nothing more to prove?

Stoneman was somewhat more convincing than he had been in the first innings, but only somewhat. He was dropped twice before giving it away on 60 with a slash to one of Southee’s worst deliveries.

I had written note after his first innings that if Vince were ever to make a test century, it would be a fine, pretty thing that I would like to see. When he, predictably, unleashed a silky off drive third ball, the general feeling was that it was the start of an exquisite 18, or a gorgeous 23. But there was less beauty and more application today, as Vince made his way to 76 before, yes, nicking to slip. Same ending, but more chapters.

I had left for the airport to return to Wellington shortly before Vince’s dismissal, so followed the rest of the game on TV and the internet, including the heart-health challenge of the last hour of the last day. The partnership between Wagner—pleased to have found a new way to irritate the opposition—and Sodhi kept England at bay. New Zealand taking the test series (though that isn’t a word that should really be used for two matches) while England had the ODIs was a fair reflection of the strength of the teams.

Hagley Park is a wonderful venue for tests. There should be a game there and at the Basin every year, with remaining games divided between Hamilton, Mt Maunganui (both of which have lights), and Dunedin. No more tests in the empty greyness of Eden Park, thanks.

I have recently read John Bew’s biography of Clement Attlee, Citizen Clem. He begins each chapter with a quotation from a work that influenced Attlee at the period the chapter describes. That on Attlee’s early years as an MP (he was elected in 1922) opens with a familiar poem that outlines a determination to build a new, better, society out of the suffering brought about by the Industrial Revolution. Attlee quoted it in his 1920 work The Social Worker, which was both an early textbook on that unjustly derided vocation and a statement of political belief.

Hard to think that it is the same verses as those subjected to daily torture by the Barmy Army after the first ball of each day. In fairness, Jerusalem had become a patriotic vehicle by Attlee’s time, but after the First World War, its expression of an intent to make the country a better place out of the suffering was still understood. Not an ounce of this remains in the accusatory manner in which it was delivered in Christchurch. Presumably, the reference to dark satanic Mills is thought to be to the former New Zealand seamer. If any of Blake’s original intent was understood, the same people who sing the song in the morning wouldn’t pick on security guards doing their job on or close to the minimum wage in the afternoon.

Vintage Summer 2015

John Arlott’s Vintage Summer 1947 was one of the first cricket books I owned. Written 20 years after the event, it is the great commentator’s memoire of the second post-war season, his first as a full-time commentator and reporter. By the time he wrote the book Arlott was established as one of Britain’s best wine writers; “vintage” was his highest bestowment of approval.

Arlott had spent most of the Second World War as a policeman in Southampton, dodging the bombs and dealing with the detritus that war washes up on civilised shores. Two years after peace, he spent the summer watching cricket and counting it as work. His pleasure at this personal liberation suffuses the pages and there is a sense that the country as a whole was breathing out, at last.

Cricket grounds were packed: 14,500 wedged into the College Ground at Cheltenham for the Championship decider between Gloucestershire and Middlesex. A third of that today and the ground would be thought full. Forty-six thousand paid at the gate to join the members during the five days of Canterbury Week.

There was some wonderful cricket, much of it from the Middlesex pair of Denis Compton and Bill Edrich, both of whom scored an unprecedented 3,000 runs, carefree, and dashing, and including six centuries between them in the tests against South Africa.

I went to a talk by Compton at the County Ground in Bristol in the early 90s, and saw boyhood adoration in the rheumy eyes of those who had seen him play, though some had the decency to be as appalled as I was at their hero’s shameful racism.

Which have been my vintage summers?

The sun-drenched salad days of the mid-seventies are certainly among them. In 1975 I saw hundreds for Clive Lloyd in the first World Cup Final, and Colin Cowdrey against the Australians in the same week.

In 1976 I was there for double and single hundreds, both of pure silk, by Zaheer Abbas in Canterbury Week; Holding’s demolition of England on an Oval featherbed; a Lord’s final win for Kent, all but denied by a one-legged D’Oliveira fifty; and a helicopter bringing the Sunday League trophy to Maidstone as rivals faltered in the last moments of the season. The early years of the new century are there too, when I was CricInfo's man in the North Island. Like John Arlott, I could barely believe that I was being paid to watch cricket and report on it.

But 2015 topped them all. It presented as pure a distillation of remarkable cricket as it would be possible to conceive or hope for; cricket that was better than any that I have seen before or, unless I am very lucky, will see again.

Here are some of the features that made it an unmatched vintage.

The summer of Sangakkara

The great Sri Lankan batsman Kumar Sangakkara said farewell to Wellington with a test double hundred and two one-day hundreds. The double century was a masterpiece of technique and restraint. The second half of the innings was made with the tail for company, but he farmed the strike as efficiently as a Dutch tulip farmer and still scored at four an over.  

At the Cake Tin during the pre-World Cup one day series, he peeled off a hundred with the nonchalance of a high roller taking a thousand dollars from his stash. Made at just over a run a ball, it set New Zealand a target that was too much on the day.

Best of all was his 70-ball century against England in the World Cup. Poor England. In their old-fashioned way, they thought that 309 offered maximum security, but it turned out to be an open prison out of which Sri Lanka could saunter at will. Sangakkara’s century was his fastest in ODIs, one of four consecutive hundreds he made in the World Cup, but he was no more than toying with the England attack. Victory came in the 48^th over, but it could have been ten overs earlier if he had felt like it.

To see one of the greatest batsmen in the history of cricket displaying his full brilliance would be enough to make any summer a vintage one.

Williamson and Watling’s world record

Kane Williamson’s batting in 2015 gave us an inkling of what watching Bradman must have been like.

Please understand that I am not being so foolish as to say that Williamson is the new Bradman. That would need a touch of the sun well beyond what is available here in Wellington. But the relentless rationality that Williamson brought to the crease in 2015 (it produced a test average of 90 or so for the year; Bradmanesque, some might say) must have been about the closest we have seen to the Don’s human algorithm for a long time: a run-scoring answer to almost every ball, but usually low-risk, rarely flashy and never extravagant (except when driving a six to win a game against Australia with one wicket to fall); timing and placement rather than power and effort. Of course, Bradman kept it up for twenty years, that’s the difference.

He began at the Basin during the test against Sri Lanka during the first week of the year. After a first-innings 69—it was a surprise when he was out, as it always is these days—in the second innings Williamson was established again, but with wickets falling around him. Soon, only five remained, the lead a mere 24.

Williamson addressed the situation by ignoring it. As the finest batsmen do, he responded to each ball by assessing its merit and acting accordingly. As commentators have noted, he does this no matter what form of the game he is playing. It sounds straightforward, but only a very good player bring it off.

Williamson and BJ Watling put on an unbroken 365 for the sixth wicket, a new test record. Remarkably, the existing record was created at the Basin less than a year before, by Brendon McCullum and Watling against India. So Watling joined Bradman, Hammond and Ames as the only players to break their own world partnership record (at least since the early days of test cricket when it must have happened more often).

The earlier stand had saved the game; this one won it, establishing BJ Watling as the lost Tracy brother in terms of rescuing impossible situations. In this era of batsmen-keepers, he is as good as anybody behind the stumps. Yet when the journalists and websites picked their end-of-year World XIs only the Australian writer Chloe Saltau (of those I have seen) picked Watling as wicketkeeper. He is the forgotten hero of New Zealand cricket.

In fifty years’ time people will look at the scorecard of the Basin Reserve test of 2015 and will say “A win from a deficit of 135 on first innings, a world record and double hundreds by two of the finest batsmen ever to play the game. Anybody who saw that game was pretty lucky”. So we were.

A great day at the Cake Tin (1)

The World Cup group match between New Zealand and England was among the best days I have spent at the cricket, and certainly the most astonishing. I have watched the highlights every few weeks since and it enthralls every time.

With England 107 for three batting first, the game had fewer than 20 overs to run, that’s how astonishing it was. This came about because of two extraordinary performances.

Tim Southee’s seven for 33 was the best one-day bowling I have seen. I have thought about this and looked through Wisden for alternatives. The Yorkshire slow left-armer Don Wilson’s six for 18 at Canterbury in the first year of the Sunday League was the previous best, statistically at least (it was one of the great Kent collapses: 70 for one becomes 105 all out). Joel Garner at the ’79 World Cup final? Derek Underwood most Sundays? Not as good as Southee at the Cake Tin this day.

The ball in Southee’s hands was an obedient shepherd’s dog. Four of the seven were bowled, each with the ball no more than grazing the off stump.

I’m not one for atmosphere at the cricket, generally speaking. I’d choose the quiet hum of the Mote or Pukekura Park a quarter full over a throbbing stadium almost any day, but it was great to be at the Cake Tin to hear Southee’s name sang out just as Richard Hadlee’s was thirty years ago.

Southee’s performance would have been enough to put that day on this list. What followed ranks it as a contender for the day, of all the days over the past fifty years, that I would most like to watch again.

Brendon McCullum went about the pursuit of the modest target of 124 as if it were a silent film heroine tied to the train tracks awaiting urgent rescue. For Anderson, Broad and Finn having an opening batsmen charging towards them like a pocket Trumper was utterly disconcerting. A run rate of 15 an over in a 50 over match. It was magnificent in its temerity.

A wonderful day.

A great day at the Cake Tin (2)

Martin Guptill caressed the first ball of the match to the straight boundary and the World Cup quarter-final between New Zealand and the West Indies was under way. In its way, Guptill’s innings was even more remarkable than McCullum’s, not just for its prolificacy.

It was paced quite beautifully and there was hardly a shot that the MCC coaching book wouldn’t be proud of. Guptill’s century came up in 111 balls with 12 fours but no sixes. Only then did he put the foot down, roaring out of sight leaving behind a dust cloud of extraordinary numbers: 137 in 52 balls with 12 more fours…and 11 sixes.

And all with lovely, pure cricket strokes. I have been trying to decide who Guptill reminded me of that day, without reaching a convincing answer. Cowdrey? Too much power. Not the brutality of Viv Richards. Not as rugged as Gooch. Then yesterday I read this:

…cricket of elegant classicism, of economy of movement, of touch and precision rather than brawn. But then I also remembered how he pervaded a crease rather than simply occupying it, and how he obtained such power from such a minuscule backlift, barely a flex of the wrists.

That’s it. Apart from the bit about the miniscule backlift, that could be a description of Martin Guptill in the World Cup quarter-final. In fact, it is Gideon Haigh on Martin Crowe, whose death has inspired some fine writing. There is no finer compliment for a New Zealand batsman than to say that he reminds the spectator of Crowe, especially Guptill, whose mentor Crowe was.

At the Basin test a couple of weeks ago I sat next to someone who dismissed Guptill’s innings as being made against poor bowling. Well, up to a point, but let us give Guptill some credit for making them bowl badly. It was a World Cup quarter final and there was immense pressure on the batsman to which he responded magnificently (the same man reckoned the McCullum’s triple hundred was made against bent bowling, so perhaps I am paying him too much attention).

More McCullum

Only once during that great day against England did I actually gasp at what was occurring out there. Not at a Southee wicket, a McCullum six or even Adam Milne’s brilliant boundary catch. It was when McCullum placed the sixth close catcher for Morgan.

Six close catchers in a 50-over game; something I have not seen before and am unlikely to see again, unless McCullum’s disregard for the conventions of captaincy becomes contagious. Who else would have bowled his lead bowler out as McCullum did that day? It won the game.

Nor would many captains have declared as early as he did at the Basin test, giving Sri Lanka, Sangakkara and all, a glimpse of victory, staking the series lead on a greater chance of winning the test.

McCullum’s compulsion to audaciousness was one of the defining features of 2015. Batting with resilience, style, panache, and charged with TNT. Bowling that was perfect. And leadership that sailed over the horizon to confound the flat Earth sceptics. A vintage summer indeed, the best in half a century.

New Zealand v Australia, First Test, Basin Reserve, Second Day, 13 February 2016

Scorecard

We’ve been here before. At the Basin Reserve tests of both the last two years, in fact. New Zealand skittled on a green pitch on the first day; the opposition runs up a good lead on the second. So what happens next? According to precedent, BJ Watling breaks the world sixth wicket partnership record. This he did against India in 2014 with Brendon McCullum, and against Sri Lanka last year with Kane Williamson. If the laws of probability intervene to prevent this, New Zealand are in a heap of trouble, as you tend to be if you finish the second day with the opposition 280 ahead with four wickets standing.

The day was a little pedestrian. In the seventies we would have been thrilled with 316 runs in a day’s play, but only three wickets fell, so it is churlish to think that Australia should have motored on a bit more?

Usman Khawaja’s century was the best cricket of the day. He reached three figures off a Craig long hop, though the Basin scoreboard had a bulb missing as usual, so some spectators thought he was moving from 95 to 99. Khawaja went on to make 140 with an ease and repertoire of shot that makes him a delight to watch. He has had a stuttered start to his international career, but four hundreds in 13 tests speaks for itself. Almost 30, he looks set to emulate Mike Hussey in having a late start to a notable career.

Adam Voges’ figures are similar, and he batted all day to finish unbeaten on 176. This is worthy of high praise of course. And yet… Of course, the fact that he was bowled off an erroneously called no ball in the last over yesterday may colour the judgement of his innings. Perhaps the runs he scored today should be properly credited to the career record of umpire Richard Illingworth, which would more than double his nine-test batting aggregate.

Voges scored only 33 in the morning session, and took 203 balls to reach three figures; against a tiring attack on a flat track. By way of variation, Craig offered up a full toss to help him across the line.

Voges did speed up later in the day, with some strong cuts and drives, but there were plenty of edges too. It wasn’t fluent. This innings  reminded me of Keith Fletcher of Essex and England, not in its style, but in its anonymity. Fletcher scored seven test hundreds, but hands up who can remember any of them. Thought not.

But Voges has put his side in a winning position, which was why he was picked.

Two of the three wickets to fall today went in the same Boult over. Khawaja was leg before playing back to the new ball. It looked a bit high and it was surprising that he didn’t call for a review. New Zealand did take this option next ball for a leg before against Mitch Marsh. We might balance the deserved tsunami of praise for Brendon McCullum with this thought: he is a shocking DRS decision maker. This one got the trifecta: pitched outside leg, inside edge and missing.

Marsh lasted only one more ball. Boult took a glorious return catch, flinging himself to his right in his follow through, and holding on with his fingertips. He has a history of making corking catches in Basin tests: Rahane and Ramdin were other victims in recent years.

Marsh, Phillips, Healy, Gilchrist, Haddin. A line of keepers noted for their attacking, joyful batting. It seems that the chain has been broken with Peter Nevill, who made a stodgy 32 from 94 balls.

The New Zealand attack persevered, but was largely unthreatening. Off spinner Mark Craig keeps taking wickets at this level but does not exert pressure. To put it another way, he does not take wickets at the other end as a good spinner should do. Neither was Corey Anderson’s reputation enhanced. There was bluster, but no bite and there were four runs or more an over for the taking.

So it was the same old story in trans-Tasman sport (apart from the rugby, obviously): hope with disappointment in its wake. But it was a fine day with a sold out signs up, so not bad at all.

New Zealand v Australia, First Test, Basin Reserve, First Day, 12 February 2016

Scorecard

The contest for sport’s most unoriginally named prize begins. Australia and New Zealand will contest the Trans-Tasman Trophy over two matches this week and next. Where’s the history, the romance, the inspiration? It should be the Clarrie Grimmett Trophy, after the Dunedin-born, Wellington-schooled leg spinner who bowled thousands of overs on the Basin before crossing the Tasman to play 37 tests for Australia, finishing with a world-record 216 wickets.

There has been much conjecture about the pitch ahead of the game, and at the start of the day it did indeed have about it a sufficiently verdant hue to suggest that it would provide a moderately hungry sheep with a decent lunch. In New Zealand we have fixed on the idea that the Australians are flat-track bullies. By way of reinforcing this notion Wellington’s Dominion Post this morning featured a large-type scorecard of Australia’s first innings at Trent Bridge last August, in which they were bowled out for 60.

Alas, Brendon McCullum lost the toss, so it was the home side who were the laboratory beagles testing how toxic the pitch was.

Fifty-one for five by drinks. It wasn’t one of those sessions where the ball was constantly beating or finding the edge. Most of the batsmen—Guptill and Williamson in particular—looked comfortable until they got out. The run rate was more than six an over for the first six overs. But once the bowlers found their line and length the ball did just enough.

Peter Siddle was outstanding. It is difficult to believe that a vegan can bowl such bustling aggression, but today he put the ball on the right spot time and again. Hazlewood bowled better when he had Siddle’s example to follow. Jackson Bird did not have such a good day, bowling an Australian length on a New Zealand pitch.

Anderson and Watling managed a partial recovery with a partnership that took New Zealand through to lunch. Watling and Bracewell were out soon after lunch, but Anderson batted for almost two-and-a-half hours for his 38. Yet it was not an innings that increased confidence in Anderson as a test No 6. It included six fours, which goes to show how difficult he found it to score singles and rotate the strike. At this point Mitchell Santner (absent with a foot injury here) looks a better fit in this position.

Anderson struck Nathan Lyon over mid on for four when the off spinner returned mid-afternoon, but was succoured by a slight change of pace into chipping the next ball tamely to mid off. Tim Southee attempted to get off the mark by slogging over long on and was caught at backward point, giving Lyon his second wicket in two overs at bargain basement cost.

Why Southee bats above Trent Boult is a mystery to everybody who was at the Basin today. That New Zealand finished with as many as 183 was due to Boult, who hit three sixes—stroked would be a better word, such was the refinement of the shots—and put on 46 for the tenth wicket with Mark Craig.

There was early promise for New Zealand, with Southee dismissing both openers in his first two overs. Smith was dropped by Craig at second slip, and Watling missed a tough stumping chance off Craig when Khawaja advanced down the pitch, but there was an ease about the batting of both men that had been absent from New Zealand’s innings. I was a surprise when Smith hit a low return catch to Craig to be dismissed for 71.

New Zealand’s difficult day was compounded in the final over of the day when Bracewell bowled Voges only to have Richard Illingworth call no ball. Replays showed a heel clearly behind the line.

I remember Colin Cowdrey’s hundredth test, at Edgbaston against Australia in 1968. It seemed an extraordinary feat, and some doubted that it would ever be equalled. Today, Brendon McCullum became the 64^th to achieve the feat, but he is the first to do so with consecutive appearances, something that we may very well not see again. Cowdrey scored a hundred way back when, but McCullum made a duck today, a Bradmanesque response, perhaps, to a standing ovation.

At the end of the day I was waiting for my Khandallah correspondent to pick me up outside the ground when one of a passing group of young fellows pointed at me and said “look, it’s Tony Greig” (I wear a white hat similar to that sported habitually by the late commentator, and am tall, though not as tall as him). Fortunately, I keep at my disposal a Tony Greig impersonation that suffices on such occasions. Doffing the hat, I said “good awfternoon gentlemen, let’s have a look at the pitch here at the Basin, where it will go like a tracer bullet”. I think that I made their day.

New Zealand v Sri Lanka, 2nd Test, 4th day, Basin Reserve

http://www.espncricinfo.com/new-zealand-v-sri-lanka-2014-15/engine/match/749779.html

As I have grown older I have become less certain about stuff. No longer do I believe, as I once fervently did, that Mr Gladstone had the solution to the Irish Question. I am not as sure as I was that gherkins are the ideal complement to a roast dinner, and I concede that it is worth spending more than $10 on a shirt.

But on one matter I will not be shaken. That test match cricket is the finest public entertainment that could be conceived of, and that its existence is sufficient of itself to mark us out as a sophisticated civilisation.

That belief has been reinforced by today’s play at the Basin. One day I will write about the best days’ test cricket I have had the privilege of attending. This day will be on the list, no doubt about it.

The facts are these: Kane Williamson and BJ Watling, having batted throughout the final session of play yesterday, kept their wickets intact until well into the final session today before withdrawing unbeaten with their respective highest test scores of 242 and 142.

More than that, together they put on 365 for the sixth wicket, more than any pair has managed in any of the 2,156 test matches that have been played since 1877. Remarkably, the previous record was set at the Basin last February and BJ Watling was involved then too, with Brendon McCullum. I would have to check Bradman’s record more carefully to be certain, but a quick perusal of CricInfo does not produce any other example of a batsman breaking his own world partnership record.

And I was there to see it. Watching a world partnership record being set has always been a spectating ambition of mine. I had thought that being there for the first 150 or so of the McCullum/Watling record would be as close as I would get.

There were not a huge number of ravishing shots. Between them, Williamson and Watling hit only 27 fours (and one six for the latter). A death-march slow outfield did not help, but the beauty of the batting was in the discipline and tempo. After an hour’s play today I wrote a note questioning if they might be a bit slow, it being too soon to bat just for time. They knew what they were doing: ensuring that the foundation was absolutely solid. When the pace quickened in the afternoon, it was not through big hits, but precisely placed shots for one and two. So very clever.

Williamson’s concentration is extraordinary. He could sit through the Ring Cycle followed by a reading of War and Peace without showing the least sign of weariness. Nine test centuries and he is not 25 until August. Watch him bat and remember that you are watching one of the greats.

On the radio Allen McLaughlin has been making the point that BJ Watling featured in none of the World XIs picked by various pundits at the end of the year. Most pick AB de Villiers as keeper. De Villiers is a fine batsman, but a manufactured custodian. Watling is a superior keeper and, as a double world-record breaker in the last twelve months, has the batting credentials.

Conventional wisdom would have it that New Zealand—one up in a two-match series—should bat on well into the last day, so as to remove Sri Lanka’s chance of winning completely. Some of us hoped that McCullum would be bold enough to give Sri Lanka four or five overs at the end of the day, chasing a target of 450 plus.

But Brendon McCullum likes to roll the dice. He is interested in winning test matches as much as test series. The declaration came earlier than we had dared to hope (or in some cases, feared). It was thrilling, audacious and so smart. He set Sri Lanka 390 in 107 overs. Very tough, but possible, with Sangakkara in the line-up. And Sri Lanka have to have a go if they are to save the series, the risks they must take thus increasing New Zealand’s chances. Test cricket needs captains prepared to be as bold as McCullum.

Contrast with Steve Smith, grimly batting on at the MCG last week until India were completely shut out, cutting his own chances of victory off at the knees.

What will happen on day five? Boult and Southee might swing it like the Glenn Miller Orchestra. Sangakkara might emulate Arthur Fagg and score two double hundreds in the same game. Or it might peter out into a tame draw. The uncertainty will quicken our step down the Kent Terrace on the way to the Basin on Wednesday.