England lose in Wellington

New Zealand v England, T20 (second of five), The Cake Tin, 3 November 2019

Scorecard

It is always a pleasure to welcome England to these shores, but the publication of the schedule a few months ago registered a high on the apprehension scale among the cricketing faithful. International cricket at the start of November? We did a collective impression of Sgt Wilson from Dad’s Army, asking “do you think that’s wise?”. The New Zealand climate is a capricious thing at the best of times, but give it international cricket to mess with and it becomes as flighty as a granny fed champagne for breakfast at Christmas.

For this reason, the tour has largely been kept out of the South Island, after the first T20 in Christchurch last Friday. (The third game is in Nelson, but that doesn’t count; it is on the same latitude as Wellington, but whereas the capital looks south, nothing between it and the penguins, Nelson is a north-facing suntrap, generating more vitamin D than is good for anybody). Of course, the weather has made fools of this protective scheduling. Unprecedented 30-degree temperatures swept the South Island today, and some of the North too. You have already guessed where the lowest maximum in New Zealand today was registered: the Kelburn weather station, which overlooks the Cake Tin. Mind you we would have settled for that 18 degrees if offered, and it was wise to play the game in the afternoon. I write in what would have been the mid-innings break and a swirling mist is enveloping the house as if it were captioned “London 1862”.

The two teams had an experimental feel about them. For New Zealand, Kane Williamson is missing the series because of a hip injury (but we all staying as calm as we can in the circumstances). Pleasingly, Trent Boult has made it a priority to play in the Plunket Shield rather than the first three of these games. England are also prioritising the tests. Root, Buttler, Archer, Stokes and Woakes are all missing the T20s but will be here for the tests later in the month, which is the right way round.

Joe Denly also misses the T20 series through injury. I hope that he is fit for the tests. If not, he may not get another chance, having been written off prematurely by some despite creditable performances in the Ashes series. Denly’s grandmother was kind to me as a lunchtime playground supervisor at Herne Bay Infant School in the sixties, so you will find nothing that isn’t positive about him in these columns.

England won the toss and put New Zealand in, which had worked a treat in their easy victory at Hagley Oval on Friday. Sam Curran, who has progressed from promising newcomer to senior bowler with only a scant intervening period, opened along with one of the two debutants, Saqib Mahmood of Lancashire, who, by way of welcome to international cricket, went for six twice in his first over, once by Guptill and once by Munro. The latter was lbw to Curran in the next over, after which Pat Brown of Worcestershire, playing his second international game, replaced Mahmood. He was also given a reminder that he had taken a big step up, with 15 coming from his first four deliveries. He should have had Seifert caught next ball, but Vince put down what looked a straightforward chance at backward point.

We last came across James Vince at Canterbury just over a month ago, looking I thought a bit doleful as he came out to bat having just learned that he had fallen well down the test pecking order. He would look back on that as a time of celebration compared to the nightmare day he had today. That was the first of three chances he put down. The second would have been the catch of the season and he did well to dive and get a hand to it as he ran from long on to long off. The third was on the mid-wicket boundary and looked as easy as the first. To be kind, both may have come to him straight out of the sun. A four-ball one rounded off his day. That will happen to anybody occasionally, even a player as good as Vince undoubtedly is. I hope he resisted the temptation to buy a Lotto ticket though; not today.

It wasn’t only Vince who had a bad day in the field. Billings couldn’t hold a high gloved chance from Guptill, Curran might have taken a hard one at backward square leg and Malan dropped the easiest of the lot in the last over. New Zealand missed nothing and that was the main difference today.

Colin De Grandhomme came in at No 4. One day he will stay there for the rest of the innings and put the game so far out of reach that it won’t be worth the other side coming out to bat. Today he made 28 from 12, giving those that followed a little time to breath.

I had just written a note that England’s bowling inexperience was showing when the Lewis Gregory, the other debutant, came on and took a wicket first ball. I had hoped that Somerset’s other representative, Tom Banton, would play today. I suspect that in twenty years’ time it would be something to say that you had seen his first international appearance.

Chris Jordan bowled magnificently, with a slower ball that is one of the best in the business. It is a reflection of England’s ODI strength that they could omit as fine a bowler from the World Cup squad. Sam Curran was also very good. Was the total of 176 for eight enough? Opinion was divided in the members’ lounge, “about par” a common phrase.

England began in the worst possible way as Jonny Bairstow dinked an easy catch to mid on off Southee. The ball may have held up a little, sending the stock of the home total up a few points. Vince’s unhappy day ended soon after, bringing Eoin Morgan in. There followed the most interesting passage of play in the game. New Zealand fed his strength square on the offside, placing, at one point, three backward points, sometimes polishing the apple of temptation by removing third man. Morgan responded by cutting over the top of them to the effect of 32 from 17 balls when he was out to Santner, whose strategy was more orthodox. Morgan was caught at long on by De Grandhomme, on almost the exact patch of turf on which Adam Milne dived to catch him in the World Cup game here four years ago. Then, it precipitated a collapse like an Antarctic ice shelf from global warming. Today the consequences were not as spectacular, but it was as significant a turning point.

Morgan was the first of five England batsmen to be caught on or near the Cake Tin’s long straight boundaries, a sequence that drove the English press contingent into social media apoplexy. Why aim for the long straight boundaries when the short square ones are available? Could they have been taking out the frustration of a late night watching the rugby? I thought Morgan’s post-match analysis to be more reasonable. He praised the New Zealand bowlers for forcing the England batsmen to hit straight, which they did better than the England bowlers. Why, after all, would a batsman hit to a long boundary if he could choose a short one?

In defence of the Cake Tin, though it is an oval, the square boundaries are not ridiculously short. It is a decent shape for a cricket field, which is why it is not so good for rugby and football’s rectangles, from which most spectators are at some distance.

The game seemed to be settled with the required rate nearing 12 an over after 13 overs. With four balls of his spell left, Ish Sodhi would have been pretty happy with two for 15. Jordan hit those four deliveries for a four followed by three sixes, to bring England right back into it. Two more boundaries followed before Jordan became the latest to hole out in the deep, for 36 from 19. A six from Gregory, who had a good debut, was the last of the resistance. The winning margin of 21 runs made it look a touch easier than it felt when first Morgan, then Jordan were hammering the bowling.

T20 is notoriously difficult to predict, but three-two would be a safe enough prediction as long as one isn’t tied down to who has three and who two.

This was an enjoyable game, and a good start to my international cricket watching (the game in Singapore not withstanding), which will see India in Wellington in 2020 and me in Sydney for the New Year test between Australia and New Zealand.

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.