A Great Test Match: New Zealand v England, 2nd Test, Basin Reserve, 24-28 February 2023

 

Scorecard

As Richie Benaud would have said, “Blundell; Tucker; Anderson the man to go”.

Thus ended the finest test match that most of us have seen, a contest that joins Sydney 1894, Headingley 1981 and Kolkota 2001 as the only test matches to be won by a team following on; and Adelaide 1993 in being won by one run. One match on two of cricket’s most exclusive lists.

I was there (the three best words that anyone can write about a great sporting fixture), for the whole match, but let us focus on the extraordinary fifth day.

It began with England needing 210 more for victory with nine wickets standing, a situation that we New Zealanders would have grabbed thankfully had it been offered a day in advance, but which had become disappointing after the home team lost its last five wickets for 28.

The man out at the end of the fourth day was Zak Crawley, bowled through a gap big enough for a basketball. As a man of Kent I am naturally pleased to see the old club have a presence in the England team, but supporters of every county can propose a player or two who would have averaged more than 27 had they been given 33 tests. I’ll start: Darren Stevens. “James Hildreth” sings out from the Quantocks and the Mendips, and so on.

Ollie Robinson is in the great tradition of Sussex nightwatchmen inspired by Robin Marlar, apocryphally out second ball for six. Robinson took a single off the first ball of the penultimate over of the fourth day, so exposing Duckett, then attempted to put the ball over the Museum Stand before the scheduled close.

It was therefore no surprise when, early on the final day, Robinson scythed one in the air, finding Michael Bracewell under it.

Bracewell had been from triumph to disaster and was now making the return journey. On the first day he took the best slip catch that the Basin has seen in a long time, stretched full length parallel to the ground, collecting the ball in his left hand at the second attempt to dismiss Duckett.

But on the fourth day, Bracewell became a national villain when he was run out after omitting the most basic of cricketing protocols: grounding his bat when completing a run. Only five more were added to the total before New Zealand were all out, which left Bracewell’s face on the wanted poster seeking the man responsible for England’s target being fifty or so fewer than it might have been. What is more, he knew that, as the only spinner in the team, he was carrying a nation’s expectations, despite having been a serious bowler for only a couple of years.

Michael Bracewell had a good day, in the end.

It was when Ben Duckett was out six runs later, flashing at one outside the off stump off Henry, that we took the first tentative shuffle towards the edge of our seats. These days, whenever an English batter gets out to a shot that has not been in the MCC Coaching Book since Gladstone was prime minister, cynics are inclined to point to the moral failings of what, for convenience, we will call Bazball. This despite McCullum being responsible for reviving England’s test team from the frightened, failed state it was in less than a year ago. In fact, England’s approach to the chase was pretty conventional.

Tom Blundell took the catch. Second-highest scorer in both innings here, he has conducted more rescue operations in the past year than the average lifeboat crew. For once, he came in with what appeared to be a decent score on the board, 297 for five, but take the deficit into account and it was 71 for five, so it was carry on as normal. In England’s second innings, Blundell stood up to the quick bowlers more than I have seen any keeper do, and he did it superbly, like Godfrey Evans standing up to Alec Bedser.

Blundell put on 158 with Kane Williamson. For much of his career, you looked at the scoreboard 45 minutes after Williamson has come in and saw that he had 35, but couldn’t remember how he got them. For the time being he has lost this ability to accumulate by stealth, and here it was more of a battle, but the longer it went on the more fluent he became on his way to 132. The memories that this match gave us.

On the boundary, Neil Wagner waited. He may have been wondering if this was his last day as a test cricketer. England’s new, aggressive mindset had cost him 311 runs from just 50 overs, the trademark Wagner short-pitched delivery more of a threat to spectators on the boundary than it was to the batters. He had lost a few kph, just enough to take the aces out of the pack that he used to perform his trick that kidded his victims that he was genuinely quick. He had become Boxer, the carthorse from Animal Farm, whose “work harder” solution to every problem could no longer defy the advancing years.

Wagner came on first change. Ollie Pope swotted his third ball to mid-wicket boundary, and it seemed we would have to look elsewhere for our hero today. Confidence buttressed, Pope saw four more runs coming from the last ball of the over and shaped to cut, but Wagner was telling the old joke again. It was on Pope a tad quicker and a smidgen straighter than he anticipated. Latham took a good catch at second slip. Eighty for four.

Joe Root and Harry Brook were now together, the most reliable Yorkshire combo since Aunt Betty and puddings. Their first-innings partnership of 302 for the fourth wicket was the best batting that any of us had seen for a long time. Brook made 186 from 176 balls with a low level of risk and a near-perfect match of shot to delivery. The perfection of his placement suggested that he could earn a living threading needles.

In comparison to Brook, anything that might be said about Root’s innings is at risk of damning him with faint praise. At any other time in England’s test cricket history we would say that four an over, mostly on the first day, was a remarkable rate of scoring. It was a perfectly judged innings, and had New Zealand lost on the third or fourth day, as many of us expected, we would have treasured the memory of this test match for the batting of Root and Brook alone.

Root nudged the ball towards the gap between third slip and gully and seemed to set off. Maybe he had forgotten that Blundell was standing up to Southee, ready to collect Bracewell’s throw. It was Brook’s call, but it must be hard to tell your hero “no”. He didn’t face a ball.

With 173 to get and five wickets standing, the game had become New Zealand’s to win, but the combination of Root at his best and Stokes, who loves a cocktail of tension and pressure, was as good as the cricket world could offer in this situation.

A contact who spent time in the press box told us that the English writers are calling Stokes “Brearley”, and not in a nice way. If this is so they should be ashamed, so much has Stokes done for cricket in general and England’s cricket in particular. One of the many narratives of the epic story of this test match was that both Stokes (knee) and Henry (back) were struggling with injuries and pain that should properly have seen them in the dressing room attached to a small iceberg.

The tension and bottled-up emotion of the next three hours was worthy of Le Carré at his best. Every ball came wrapped in hope and fear, the balance for the home supporters ebbing away from the former until it seemed all gone. Root, his judgement making Solomon look a dabbler in the art, took on the role of run chaser and proceeded at close to a run a ball. He was harsh on Bracewell in particular. Stokes, cast against type, was putting the emphasis on defence, ready to take over the guns if Root went down.  

Southee was most effective in keeping the scoring rate down, and his effervescent first-innings 73 was critical in reducing the lead. It will seem a surprising observation to say that a knock of 49 balls that contained five fours and six sixes shows us (and ideally Southee himself) what a dusting of contemplation can do. His shot selection was more spot-on than at any time since his debut 77 in a lost cause at Napier in 2008, for which I was also present.

I wanted Wagner back on earlier. Root and Stokes had been reasonably respectful of him at the start of their partnership, as if they had heard a particularly apposite sermon on the dangers of temptation. Bracewell bowled admirably, but was always dependent on a batter’s error to take a wicket, which did not succeed in doing.

We didn’t see Wagner in the attack again until the target was below 60, and it seemed that our chance had gone. So depressed was the general mood that some people who had left their city-centre offices at 80 for five were sufficiently desperate as to contemplate returning to them.

Perhaps the gloomy miasma reached and infected Stokes. He took the fourth ball of Wagner’s first over back to be an invitation to disrupt the traffic to the Mt Victoria tunnel, but, from somewhere, Wagner summoned that extra bit of pace and up in the air it went, landing safely in the hands of Latham at backward-square leg.

Astonishingly, Root fell for the same old trick in Wagner’s next over, except that this one did not get up as much. Had the shot gone as planned it would have broken the Museum Stand clock and Root would have had his second hundred of the match, but instead it lobbed gently to Bracewell at mid on.

With 55 needed and three wickets left, the arrival of Stuart Broad at the crease was more likely to comfort the home, rather than the visiting, supporters. I recently re-read my unflattering view of Broad’s batting in the World Cup match between these teams in 2015, and thought it harsh (I compared his thinking to that of the local ovine population, to their benefit). Yet here he approached his task just as New Zealand were expecting and wanting, the only surprise being that it took him as long as nine balls to shovel a catch to deep third where, inevitably, Wagner was waiting. It needs to be said that it was a privilege to watch Broad and Anderson bowling together one last time in New Zealand.

Foakes and Leach were together with 43 needed and only Anderson to follow. Much of what happened in the remaining overs mystified me. I have never understood why, with two wickets left to win the game, a team would stop trying to get one of the incumbents out by conventional means, instead setting fielders on the boundary and relying on the batter making a mistake. But this, of all matches, is not in need of over-analysing.

Ben Foakes approached his task courageously and came so close to winning the game, yet amateur selectors continue to contemplate an England team without him. At the other end Jack Leach summoned the spirit of Headingley ’19 to give resolute support. The closer the target got, the bolder Foakes became. A pull to the mid-wicket boundary would have been caught by Bracewell, had he been on three metres further out. There was a no ball for three fielders behind square on the onside. Then were two successive fours off Wagner, the first of which might have decapitated umpire Tucker.

On and off the field, New Zealanders were struggling to hold their nerve as we counted the target down. Again, it appeared that all hope was lost. We were Tom Hanks, waiting to die on the raft in Castaway, all hope gone.

For the third time within the hour an English batter became over ambitious. With seven needed Foakes went for the big shot off Southee only to find the top edge. One of the best moments of spectating is when you follow a ball through the air and work out where it is going to fall. From my position high in the RA Vance Stand I could see that it would land about five metres inside the rope at fine leg, but that part of the boundary was obscured by television camera scaffolding, so I only at the last moment did I see Neil Wagner emerge, and throw himself towards the ball to take the catch. No possibility of drama on this day was omitted from its narrative.

In came Jimmy Anderson. Of course. That would be the story here, Anderson hitting the winning run. His clubbed four through mid on off Wagner to put England a single away from a tie supported this interpretation.

The next seven deliveries each encompassed the torment, guilt and despair of its own deadly sin. The fifth ball of Southee’s over was especially taxing as Leach made his only attempt to score in the over, stopped – just – by a diving Henry at mid on.

Then: Blundell; Tucker; Anderson the man to go, and it was done.

My Brooklyn correspondent, a man only a little younger than me, hurdled two chairs in the Long Room at the moment of victory. I myself leapt high in the air, several times, an expression of joy from which I had assumed myself to have retired in the late 1980s, but we all lost thirty years for a minute or two.

Strangers embraced, linked forever in a moment. One of the Basin regulars said that we would remember this day for the rest of our lives, and so we will. Given the choice between recalling this day and my own name, I will choose the former, with no hesitation at all.

Of all my days at the cricket, this was the best.

 

 

Random Thoughts on the Ashes: Lord’s

http://www.espncricinfo.com/the-ashes-2013/engine/current/match/566933.html

A few hours before the start of the fourth and final day’s play in the second Test I got an insight into what it is like to be Shane Watson. It was when an earthquake struck Wellington, 6.5 on the Richter Scale. Measured by the alternative fast bowlers’ scale of earthquake power it was at least a Glenn McGrath—penetrating, disconcerting and getting movement where it was least expected. It may even have been a Jimmy Anderson, with dangerous swing a threat. One day  Jeff Thomson will open from the Harbour End while Shoaib Akhtar steams in from the Island Bay End, but not this time.

I was in the gym at the time, which, as friends have been kind enough to mention, means that two exceptionally improbable events coincided. The MCC Civil Defence Manual is clear enough on the course of action in these circumstances: drop, cover and hold. Which is all very well, but on the day of the game conditions are never quite as ordered as they are in the coaching book. There was no desk or table to dive under; my treadmill was next to a large, shatterable window, so dropping where I was did not seem a sensible option.

So I attempted to make my way across the undulating floor towards the shelter of the doorframe. This is the civil defence equivalent of plonking your leg down the line of middle-and-off and playing across right across an inswinger. You know it won’t work, that you’ll be plumb lbw, yet you can’t stop yourself. I feel your pain, Shane.

Besides, even had I made it, I would have taken space that others coming after me might have made better use of. A bit like using up a DRS review on a decision that even someone in the bar at deep square leg can see is out. Moral of the story: don’t stand next to Shane Watson in an earthquake.

Watching a Test at Lord’s has an added pleasure quotient, even on television from this distance. The first match I watched there was the Gillette Cup final of 1967 between Kent and Somerset. From the early seventies until I left for New Zealand in 1997 there can only have been a handful of seasons in which I did not visit the ground. I watched three World Cup finals there, plus numerous domestic one-day finals, plenty of Tests and a good deal of county cricket (which was always a bit odd, like a busker playing in the Albert Hall, but it was an opportunity to watch from the pavilion, even if was necessary to put on a jacket and tie to do so).

Lord’s has changed a good deal in the 16 years since I was last there, much more so since my first visit thirty years before that; the new grandstand and the media centre have both appeared since ’97, but seem so familiar thanks to television coverage. MCC has done a fine job in modernising Lord’s while retaining its character as a cricket ground. Compare that to the Australian experience. The Gabba and the MCG have been turned into characterless bowls, and the SCG and the Adelaide Oval are on the way to being so.

Another reason why Lord’s is by some way the best Test venue in the UK is MCC’s intolerance. “Intolerant since 1787” might be the motto of the club, translated into Latin obviously (my Blean Correspondent will assist here), and for much of its history it has been an entirely reprehensible characteristic, shamefully racist, sexist and class-ridden. But now the MCC grandees have learned to use their intolerance for the common good, and are exercising it purposefully, for among its targets are ersatz patriotism, fancy dress and community jollity.

The playing of national anthems at the start of the game is fairly new to cricket. The Australians are to blame I think; I recall standing for the anthems for the first time when I attended the final Test of the 1998/9 series in Sydney and thinking how odd it was. It doesn’t suit the rhythm of cricket, especially for opening batsmen about to face a Test attack. For unfathomable reasons, the ceremony as often as not begins with the two teams walking onto the ground with each player hand-in-hand with a child. Invariably the cricketer is at a distance and bearing an expression that suggests the suspicion that the child is carrying leprosy, while the child has the sullenness of any contemporary youth who is a) awake and b) deprived of their on-line gaming device. Nothing could be further from the idyllic spirit that it presumably is intended to symbolise.

MCC sees this for the nonsense it is. Lord’s spared us God Save the Queen and gave us instead…the Queen. We also managed without the Jerusalem, Parry’s arrangement of four stupid questions from Blake about whether Jesus visited Glastonbury, the answer to all of which is clearly “no”. As the TMS commentator Don Mosey pointed out years ago, it is poorly chosen for community singing as it contains one note—on “built” in the penultimate line—that few untrained singers can reach.

And fancy dress (the sporting of which is defined in my dictionary as “a sad attempt to fabricate wit by those who have none”) is also out, unless, of course, it is in club colours and purchased by members from the Lord’s shop. The result is a wonderfully peaceful atmosphere characterised by an intelligent murmuring, a sound recently described by Simon Hoggart (about the House of Lords) as being that of “a basketful of puppies waking up”.

No wonder tickets for Lord’s Tests sell out faster than anywhere else, even though they charge the national debt for them. A pity that all the good cricket came from the home team this year. The Australians could pray for an earthquake.

 

New Zealand v England, 1st Test, University Oval, Dunedin, 6–10 March 2013

http://www.espncricinfo.com/new-zealand-v-england-2013/engine/current/match/569243.html

A midsummer dawn, June 1978. Catching the first train on the north Kent line; urging the tube faster around the Central Line to make a 125 from Paddington to Taunton; arriving to find standing room only for the 55-over semi-final between Somerset and Kent. No matter. They played for an hour before the rain set in.

For 35 years the 212 miles between Herne Bay and Taunton remained my personal record for travel to a washed-out day’s cricket. Not any more.

The present day. Take off from Wellington as the sun rises, change at Christchurch, a lift cadged from Dunedin airport (curiously located some distance from the city), and a hurried walk to the University Oval, the world’s most southerly Test ground. More portliness, less hair, but the same sharp anticipation of a day’s cricket in a new place, the same fatalism when the first drop of rain hits the ground the second I walk through the gate. 472 miles for a washout. New record.

No matter. My Whiteladies Road Correspondent, just arrived from the frozen north, was sheltering under a tree, and we repaired to a bar to dry out and swap old stories.

The second day provided rich consolation. It was one of the best—and certainly the most surprising—day’s Test cricket that I have seen. My correspondent remarked on the downbeat mood of the locals as far as the cricket was concerned compared to his last visit, in 2008. I explained that we had become as accustomed to failure as an Italian field-marshall and were simply providing verbal ballast against the tide of disappointment. There was relief that Brendon McCullum had put England in. We would settle in and watch England bat for a couple of days. At least there would be no New Zealand collapse today.

Southee induced Compton to play on in the third over, but nothing suggested that either the pitch or the bowlers would be a source of English distress. But on his first day as captain in a home Test (and in his home town) McCullum was Midas. Every bowling change seemed to take a wicket, every field change an irresistable lure for the batsman to hit the ball straight to the relocated fielder.

His first bowling change, an obvious one, replaced Southee with Wagner. Unaccountably, Alistair Cook slapped Wagner’s second delivery straight to Rutherford at point. Next ball Wagner welcomed Kevin Pietersen with the ball of the day, one of full length that swung in late to trap him leg before.

Bell and Trott settled in for an hour until Bell drove straight at Rutherford at short extra cover, a third wicket for Wagner. Was the ball stopping a little or was it simply the Englishmen’s inbred suspicion of abroad that causes them to start away series so poorly?

Another McCullum bowling change, another wicket. Left-armer Boult pushed one across Root, who edged to second slip. Eighty for five at lunch. Enough to overcome local reticence? No. There were two lines of argument. First, that Prior or Trott, probably both, would be good for a century in the afternoon. Second, that the pitch had devils (unspecified) in it, and that New Zealand would struggle to make three figures. Three fours off successive Boult deliveries by Prior suggested that the former was the more likely explanation, but it was time for an unlikely hero to step forward.

Bruce “Buck” Martin was selected for the New Zealand twelve against Australia at Hamilton in 2000, but was omitted on the first morning. The selectors did not call again until the tour of South Africa early this year, but Martin was not picked for a Test. So here he was, 32 years old and 14 seasons into his career, on Test debut. Buck played for Northern Districts when I was CricInfo’s man at Seddon Park, so I was happy to be there when he finally bowled with the fern on his jersey, but a mite concerned that the step up to international level would expose him.

I need not have worried, not today at least. He sent both potential centurions back to the rooms, within four balls of each other. Prior became Martin’s first Test victim when he top-edged a cut to Williamson at backward point. Trott followed in Martin’s next over, another top edge, well caught by Boult, running in from short fine leg.

His third wicket owed much to McCullum‘s new-found ability to travel about 30 seconds into the future before returning to the present to set the field accordingly. Brownlie was pushed back to the mid-wicket boundary; Broad hit the very next ball—a long hop— straight to him. It is difficult, watching Broad bat, to work out how he could possibly have scored 160 in a Test, as he did against Pakistan at Lord’s in 2010, such is the absence of worthwhile brain activity in his approach.

Buck Martin was jubilant. Players who come to the international game late usually savour it all the more, the perspective of experience allowing them to appreciate their time in the sun knowing that it will be short.

Finn and Anderson were obdurate for a while, but England were all out for 167, 300 fewer than the visiting supporters were hoping for, and 700 fewer than the home fans feared.

Martin and Wagner had four wickets each. Wagner was playing his first Test in his adopted homeland after a protracted qualifying period, so two patient bowlers had good days. The New Zealand bowling was certainly tidy and disciplined, but most of the England batsmen got out to bad shots.

What had happened before tea was, to we locals at least, astonishing. But what occurred in the final session suggested that credulity had an elasticated waistband, so far was it stretched. For at the close New Zealand were 131 for (and here’s the thing) none, the recalled Peter Fulton and debutant Hamish Rutherford untroubled, indeed  dominant. We wandered away from the University Oval much like kids leaving Disneyland for the first time, our emotional reservoirs drained by a day on which something wondrous was to be found around every corner.

On day three, just to confirm that it had not all been a dream, Fulton completed his first Test fifty for seven years, before being caught behind off Anderson. Fulton’s innings was all the more admirable for being against type: his strike rate was 33, about half what the rate at which he scores in domestic cricket.

At the other end Rutherford was secure, then dominant. He was particularly strong through the covers, invariably a sign of class. There were three sixes, all off the pedestrian Panesar, and 22 fours. He reached 171 before chipping Anderson to midwicket.

Rutherford apart, the most relishable New Zealand batting came from McCullum, who always bats as if he is seeing it like Bradman, and at the moment actually is. Three fours from one over off Finn early on was a statement of intent. Early on day four there were three sixes within six balls off Broad and Anderson. This combination dismissed McCullum for 74 (from only 59 deliveries) when Anderson held on to under a skyer.

Buck Martin’s fine debut continued with 41 from 63 balls. McCullum declared when Martin was dismissed. The lead was 293 and the best part of two days remained.

For New Zealanders, the rest of the day was a matter of watching Hope move steadily towards the horizon, disappearing over it by the close, at which point England were 234 for one. Though there was little to cause the pulse to race, it was satisfying viewing, chiefly for the enjoyment of the technical mastery of Alistair Cook, out shortly before the close for 116. As much as any batsman I have seen, Cook has refined batting to a state of technical purity. Loose balls are scored off, good balls defended. Here, he seemed slow, but scored his runs at not much short of three an over. Watching Hutton must have been something like this. Besides, nobody has seen an England player score his 24th Test century before.

At the other end, Nick Compton reached his maiden Test century shortly before the close. His was a more dogged effort, but impressive enough for someone on a pair and with the press raising questions about the genuineness of his credentials as a Test batsman.

It was cold though. Not for nothing is Dunedin known as the Edinburgh of the south. My Waikato correspondent had joined us for the weekend, and, with little prospect of excitement at the University Oval, we decided to explore Dunedin on the fifth day. My correspondent was concerned that we would miss something remarkable, and that she would be left with a shell of a man as a result. I always bear in mind John Arlott’s cautionary tale of skipping a day of an up-country match in South Africa in 1948/9, only to find that he had missed Denis Compton scoring the fastest triple century of all time.

There was no need for such concerns here. Steve Finn, taking his night-watchman job far too seriously, ground out 56 over two sessions. I arrived at tea for the most interesting hour of the day, during which three wickets fell, but it was too late to be of any significance.

The University Oval is an impressive venue, just right for Test cricket. Though it is a comfortable walk from the city centre, it has a rural feel to it, tree-lined with green hills nearby. I was reminded a little of Mote Park, Maidstone, one of my favourite grounds. It was a pleasant place to watch a good Test match, even if the weather and the placidity of the pitch combined to produce anti-climax.