The Currency of Centuries: Days 2 & 3 of the Second Test

 Scorecard

McCullum makes 302 to save a game that looked like it would be over in three days…Bangladesh lose after making 595 batting first…Sri Lanka lose after leading by 135 on first innings…New Zealand win by one run after following on. All these things have happened at the Basin Reserve in the last decade. It might be thought that we Basin regulars would have come to expect the unexpected, to retain hope to the last that the home team would find a hero who would find a white horse stabled in the RA Vance Stand and ride to the rescue. 

Yet, once Gus Atkinson had finished off the New Zealand first innings with his hat trick it never seemed that the last two days of the match were more than an administrative exercise, devoid of expectation or emotion. 

New Zealand soon gave up making serious attempts to get England’s batters out, leaving it up to Ben Stokes to choose how many New Zealand would be set. This figure turned out to be 583, and even before the second innings subsided to 59 for four there was not a person in the Basin who thought this remotely achievable. 

There were two nineties and two centuries during the phoney wars of the second innings. Hundreds are the gold standard of batting statistics, the accepted measure of true class. Witness the latest round of comparison of Kohli, Root, Smith and Williamson, which has focused more than anything on the number and frequency of three-figure scores. What transpired here questions the integrity of this currency. Are some centuries no more than a crypto scam in terms of what they tell us about the quality of the batting?

Joe Root scored 106, the third international century he has made in Wellington. The first was a run-a-ball 121 against Sri Lanka in the 2015 World Cup at the Cake Tin; the second a sublime unbeaten 153 in the Greatest Test of All at the Basin in 2023. Both were innings of immense quality, of a kind that are a warm, satisfied glow in the memory and leave a feeling of privilege at having been there to see them. 

This one,106 in 130 balls with 11 fours, did not have that status, and will not occupy much space in the memory, even in Root’s. A hundred devalued. Yet in its context it was perfect. It kept the score moving along at five an over, as much by exquisitely placed twos and threes as boundaries. It was not Root’s fault that the bowling was insipid. [As an aside, how we miss Neil Wagner, a man incapable of bowling in any situation without the intention of having ambassadors recalled.] Worth noting too that Root’s century here was the only one of the three to contribute to a win, which must have some sort of impact on the rate of exchange.

Tom Blundell has had a rough time of it lately. In India he broke double figures only once in five innings, and in Christchurch made 17 and nought followed by a scratchy 16 in the first innings here. The quality of his keeping has indicated a lowering of his confidence in general. I would have given one of the in-form keepers in domestic cricket a go here: Chu of Otago, Hay of Canterbury or Cleaver of Central Districts. 

In the second innings he made a hundred and reacted ecstatically to the achievement, as if it was paid out in gold doubloons. Were they the real thing? His 115 came from just 102 deliveries, with 13 fours and five sixes, four of which came off Shoaib Bashir, and with the help of a stiff northerly at Blundell’s back. Would Bashir have continued to bowl if the target had been for 250 fewer than it was? Almost certainly not. This was a work experience opportunity for him.

This century was similar to the one that he made on test debut against a dispirited West Indian attack. He was proud enough of that one to walk home in his batting gear, and so he should have been, just as his reaction to this one was right: it was a hundred in a test match. It secured his place in the team for the final test in Hamilton and quite probably beyond that. Is the money paid by this innings sufficient to buy that much? Or is it counterfeit?

The point should also be made that Blundell’s other three test centuries were made in the toughest of circumstances, at the MCG in the Boxing Day test; in England as New Zealand were being steamrolled by the novelty of Bazball; and last year at Mt Maunganui, one of countless rescue operations he has mounted to save a beleaguered batting performance. 

There were also two second-innings nineties, by Duckett and Bethall. I was glad that Bethall did not get to three figures. This sounds mean, but the intention is the opposite. It was predicted by many that the young Brummie-Bajan would be embarrassed by being pitched in at No 3 on debut. He was anything but, looking assured and proficient both technically and mentally. There will surely be centuries by the sackload to come, and he deserves the first to be glorious, made under the golden sun against top class bowling, not when kicking against a door blown open in a Wellington gale. 

The Basin Reserve Test: First Day

New Zealand v England, 2nd test, first day, Basin Reserve, 6 December 2024

Scorecard

It is some time since I wrote on a single day of a test match, and I may not do so for the remainder of this game, but today at the Basin was so relishable that I could not resist.

Two trends in modern selection could be observed in the composition of the teams here. The first is a degree of loyalty to current members of the XI that makes the average labrador look like Philby, Burgess or Maclean in comparison. Marnus Labuschagne is a beneficiary of this approach in the Australian XI, Tim Southee, and possibly Devon Conway, in the New Zealand team, and Zak Crawley for England. 

I have noted previously that my face in the crowd means that Crawley may as well not bother. This was the seventh time I had seen him in the middle and on only one of the previous occasions had he breached double figures. In Canterbury in April (the last time I was as cold as I was in the final hour today, incidentally) he nicked off for five. But today, with England put in by Tom Latham, Crawley reached ten with a six off Southee’s final delivery of the first over. Was the hoodoo broken? I had with me my Kent sunhat, which I intended to put on to mark Crawley reaching his hundred, sometime around the first drinks break at the rate at which he set off. 

There is much talk here in Wellington about the planning of a second tunnel through Mt Victoria, adjacent to the Basin. Now we found that it already exists, in the form of the two-lane highway down which Matt Henry’s delivery passed between Crawley’s bat and pad as he swished at his old Kent teammate to be bowled for 17. Crawley on the attack is a thrilling sight, but he has a pacifist’s defence, which is why, after 50 tests, he has an average barely above 30 and only four centuries. 

Ben Duckett was already out, for an eight-ball duck, a period of self-denial in Duckett’s terms equivalent to St Simon Stylites, who lived on a pillar near Aleppo for 26 years. This brought together Harry Brook and Jacob Bethall, potentially one of the great partnerships from now to c2040. Bethall hit a couple of gorgeous off drives before falling to a legside strangle off Nathan Smith. Joe Root was caught spectacularly by Daryl Mitchell at first slip, also off Smith. At the moment, New Zealand seem able to catch only the really difficult ones. 

England were 43 for four and in deep trouble. Fortunately for the visitors, the fifth-wicket pair that turned the game in Christchurch last week were together again, and this time they did not need the collaboration of the New Zealand fielders. 

The last time Harry Brook played at the Basin was in the Greatest Test of All, almost two years ago. Then he made 180, an innings that was the best that we had seen there for some years before, or since. It was elegant, precise  and technically not far from perfect. Today’s innings contained examples of all those elements, but with raw power and apparently (but not actually) reckless attack. At one stage it appeared that an air-raid siren should be sounded when Brook faced bowling from the southern end, so under bombardment was the food truck area. In its audacity, confidence, and domination of and contempt for the bowling it reminded me of Viv Richards, who I saw score three one-day final centuries at Lord’s, the best of which won a World Cup. I have no praise higher than that at my disposal.

Brook’s partner, Ollie Pope, continued where he left off at Hagley, Only in comparison with Brook was he laggardly as they put on 174 in just 26 overs. The innings became a runaway thoroughbred at which the home attack could only wave their arms at as it thundered past them. The other nine partnerships collectively mustered only 106. Pope succumbed to the extra pace of O’Rourke, top edging a pull to go for 66. If he does not want to keep the gloves and bat at No 6 he needs to drop a couple of sitters before the series is out.

Brook’s magnificence ended absurdly. Just before tea he nudged one into the legside and inexplicably set off for a single, the possibility of which had no more status than a QAnon rumour. Smith, following through, casually flicked the ball at the stumps to effect the run out by several metres. He made 123 from 115 deliveries. There was no wag of the tail; the last three wickets put on only 21, fpr a total of 280 (or 279, depending what scoreboard you were looking at and when; the North Koreans who undermine western morale through their control of the Basin Reserve scoreboard were in peak form today). 

Matt Henry was New Zealand’s best bowler, by quite a distance. After four overs his figures were 4-4-0-2, Will O’Rourke finished with three for 49, a much more accurate measure of his value than he attained in the first test. His pace makes a difference. 

Putting Nathan Smith on to bowl places the captain in the position of Aristotle Onassis asking Jackie Kennedy to marry him. It will be fun, but my God, the expense. Four for 86 off 12, plus the run out.

Which brings us to the other trend of modern selection, that of players announcing their own farewell. David Warner is the most egregious example, initiating a rolling national holiday culminating at the SCG where he left the team mid-series. Then Jimmy Anderson had his celebration test at Lord’s. He is here, joining in the warm ups, reminding me of those folk who retire then turn up two days a week and sit in the corner drinking tea, Can the ECB not get him an allotment, or something, to keep him occupied? 

Now Tim Southee, to go at home at Seddon Park next week. Twice in one over he was effortlessly driven to the cover boundary by Brook. No disgrace there, Then I looked again. It wasn’t Brook, but Woakes, who had just come in at No 8, but able to treat Southee with disdain. Mitch Santner was in the squad here. I do not think that his 13 wickets at Pune are enough to refute the lack of evidence of his previous 28 tests regarding him as a test-class spinner. But there was a case for picking him because of his defensive white-ball qualities, to stem the English torrent. With four right-arm quicker bowlers there is an element of Trevor Bailey’s dictum that you can change the bowler, but not the bowling. 

Then there is Will Young, player of the series in the three-nil win in India, lauded by Sunil Gavaskar as the most technically proficient New Zealand batter, but omitted for the first two tests because of that loyalty factor. There was almost nobody in the ground who believed this to be the correct decision except for those who pick the New Zealand side. With New Zealand five down and 194 behind at the close, they must surely relent. Only Williamson looked in anything like top form, and he was bowled by a no ball before edging a good ball by Carse to the keeper.

It might be thought, after 19 seasons watching at the Basin, that I would have paid more attention to the small print of the weather forecast. I was scammed by the predicted 20 degrees and failed to look at the wind direction, which was southerly, and roaring. I was at least three layers short of the minimum in such conditions. Furthermore, I forgot that in Wellington it is possible to shiver from the cold while burning from the sun, even though you are in the shade. Perhaps the memory of the three-nil series win in India just a month ago is a collective hallucination, brought on by these extreme conditions. 

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.

 

 

Peaceful days in the sun: New Zealand v England in Hamilton

New Zealand v England, second test, Seddon Park in Hamilton, 29 November to 3 December 2019

Scorecard

Restful. That is how I would characterise my three days at the Hamilton test. There was plenty to enjoy, even though the action was not frenetic (apart from when Neil Wagner was bowling, obviously), and it was good to be back at Seddon Park, which was where I watched test cricket for the first half-decade or so of the new century.

There was plenty to remember, starting with Campbell and Griffiths putting on 276 for the West Indian first wicket, only for their team to lose. That was largely thanks to Chris Cairns, who has been airbrushed out of New Zealand’s cricket history since the lawyers got interested, but was a terrific cricketer.

The following year Australia were reduced to 29 for five, a situation that Adam Gilchrist dealt with by batting as if they were 400 for one. Australia won by six wickets.

There was the two-day test against India beginning on Friday afternoon and won by New Zealand soon after lunch on Sunday on a pitch that looked as if it had been transplanted from the centre court at Wimbledon. I always think of that match whenever I hear people moaning about the Indians and their home-team groundsmen.

Then the crater test against South Africa. A big hole appeared at one end, which the groundsman filled up, then, once he had been acquainted with the rules, emptied again. It was too far outside the right handers’ leg stump to be a threat, and when the ball did land there was as likely to scoot off the other way, but it had a mesmeric effect on the bowlers who wasted a couple of days aiming at it.

So the pitch as talking point is not a new thing for Seddon Park. The strip for this game was similar to that at the Bay Oval in Mount Maunganui for the series opener. That game finished in a New Zealand win well into the fifth afternoon, which is what a test pitch is supposed to facilitate. However, that the Hamilton pitch received an ICC rating of “good”, suggested that cricket needs a new dictionary for Christmas. It was easy for batsmen to stay in on unless they tried to score at more than two-and-a-little-bit an over, which is about as bad as a test-match pitch can be.

There was a historical curiosity about the scheduling of this game in Hamilton after that at the Mount, which is little more than an hour’s drive away. It can’t have happened often that successive tests have been staged on different grounds in the same province/county/state, Northern Districts in this case (though the profusion of venues in Colombo may have beaten ND to it). This was a precaution against New Zealand’s turbulent spring weather, and it paid off, with three balmy days, hot enough to trigger a storm that finished off the first day just after tea.

Hamilton’s new lights were shown off to good effect just before the rain fell. A switch was flicked and made a substantial and immediate difference, even though it wasn’t that dark. In the County Championship, the rule that that the artificial light cannot be stronger than the natural light would mean that their being switched on at all would mean that the players would have to come off there and then.

The previous lights had to come down because the towers were an earthquake risk, though shakes are mercifully rarer in the Waikato than in much of the country. I was CricInfo’s man in Northern Districts when they went up and turned down the chance to climb to the top of one of them.

It seems compulsory for the British cricketing press to preface the name of any New Zealand player other than Williamson, Taylor and Boult with “underrated”. BJ Watling might have been thought to have used up this year’s quota during his double hundred in the first test, but a new supply was rushed out in time for the underrated Tom Latham’s first-day hundred. Those who describe Latham thus have missed his presence in the top ten of the ICC batting rankings over the past year or more.

His batting in the first innings was the most fluent of the match. He scored faster than any specialist batsman on either side, but never appeared to hurry. Latham was helped by Broad’s wayward line in his opening spell. When he got one right it was to Jeet Raval, who edged to Root at first slip. It is so often the case that the man out of form gets the bowler’s best. Raval benefitted from New Zealand’s policy of picking a squad for both these two tests and the three to follow, but further failure in Perth has cost him his place in the Boxing Day test.

Root also caught Williamson, squared up by Woakes, but Ross Taylor became established and by mid-afternoon England looked dispirited, not helped by having two leg-before decisions overturned by the DRS. In just his second over Stokes resorted to three deep on the legside plus a fine third man to Taylor, who was out more conventionally from the ball after he reached his fifty, providing Root with his third catch of the day.

Latham reached his hundred shortly before the rain brought an early end to the first day. He was out early the next morning, leaving on length a Broad delivery that hit the top of off. He was replaced by the underrated Henry Nicholls, also hiding from the English media in plain sight in the top ten of the rankings.

Just when we had agreed that Sam Curran didn’t have the pace for test cricket, he succoured Nicholls into top edging a catch to deep fine leg. Next in was Daryl Mitchell, on test debut on his home ground. Mitchell was as close to a like-to-like replacement for the injured De Grandhomme as was available, which isn’t very close at all, De Grandhomme being more than the cube of his parts, let alone the sum. At 191 for five, England had restored the balance of the game, but Watling and Mitchell reclaimed it with a stand of 124.

It occupied a serene 53 overs. With the heat, the grass bank at the top end, and BJ Watling digging in, I may have dropped off for a few seconds and dreamt myself back at Mote Park in the late seventies, the great CJ Tavaré at the crease, sucking the will to live out of the opposition. Only the Tip Top ice cream signs where the Deal Beach Parlours van should have been returned me to the present.

Joe Root resorted to placing of fielders in odd positions, but it was too random to be convincing. His handling of the bowlers had a by-numbers feel to it, but with an attack consisting of four quicks and an all-rounder whose fitness was dodgy, that would be hard to avoid. It was strange that he put himself on with Latham on 96 and helped the batsman to his century with a friendly (as Jim Laker used to describe all full tosses) full toss.

Mitchell upped such tempo as there was and played well for 73 before going the same way as Nicholls, but off the bowling of Broad, who had got Watling four overs earlier with another short one that went of the shoulder of the bat to Burns in the gully. Late-order merriment took New Zealand to 375.

England had addressed their three-keeper problem by picking a fourth, Ollie Pope, in for the injured Buttler. He was athletic, which with no frontline spinner in the XI was all he needed to be, but he lacks the quality most prized in modern keepers—he doesn’t jabber on incessantly in praise of half volleys.

Jofra Archer had a dispiriting time from which he will learn, but is a fine sight. Anyone who grew up in the era of Willis, Holding and JSE Price finds it hard to understand that a bowler can call himself fast without a run up that embraces two time zones, but with Archer and Bumrah as models, the next generation will strive for brevity.

England lost two before the close of the second day. Writers better qualified in technical analysis than me have written off Dominic Sibley as a test player on the basis that he appears to abstain from the offside as if batting in a permanent Lent. I hope that he proves them wrong, if only to show that runs in county cricket are not irrelevant. Here, it was a relief to all concerned when Southee got him lbw for four.

This was the seventh New Zealand v England test at which I have been present since moving here, but the first time a Kent player has been in the England team. Here there were two, Joe Denly and Zak Crawley.  Denly may yet become the David Steele of our time, a middle-aged hero of the Resistance. Not here though. At least there was a Kentish dimension to the dismissal, caught behind for four off Matt Henry. Denly did achieve something memorable in Hamilton: late in the game he infamously dropped a Sun crossword clue of a chance offered by Williamson. I so hope that is not what he is remembered for when his test career is done.

England finished the day on an uncomfortable 39 for two, though it would have been worse had Rory Burns not been dropped twice, the easier chance to Taylor, the harder to Raval.

My notes for the third morning consist only of the following:

“Root and Burns in no trouble for the first half of the morning”. Then, an hour or so later, “Nor the second half”. Some stories are easily told.

Root was not at his best, or particularly close to it, but that he had to work at it more than he usually appears to made it all the more praiseworthy.

Burns survived another chance on 86 when Henry butchered a run out by trying and failing to intercept a throw that Latham was perfectly placed to collect beside the stumps. He reached his hundred in mid-afternoon. Steve James, in his The Art of Centuries, explained that there is a challenge to overcome for a batsman who survives a chance or chances; he has to convince himself that he retains the right to be there. To say that a batsman is gritty has an air of damning by faint praise about it, but that should not be so, especially for an opener. Burns has that quality and should have a good run at the top of England’s order. He has also shown (see comments re Sibley, above) that runs in county cricket do mean something.

Burns was run out the ball after he achieved three figures, but it took an age to confirm, the problem being to establish that there was separation of bail and stump before Burns had made his ground, though this appeared obvious enough on the big screen. Perhaps the ICC could spare some of its largesse to provide stumps that light up for all tests, and agree that illumination equals separation.

New Zealand’s attritional bowling and field settings meant that Ben Stokes never got going before he fell to a slip catch from a Southee delivery that was one of the few to move laterally.

This brought in Zak Crawley for his debut innings. This was only the second occasion on which I have been present to watch a Kent player at the crease for the first time in a test match. The other was at the very first day’s test cricket I attended, England v New Zealand at the Oval in 1969. Then it was Mike Denness who batted with agonising uncertainty for a 43-ball two. This time it was briefer, but no better.

Crawley was anxious to impose himself and get off the mark. He drove his fourth delivery hard, but Henry at mid on made a sharp stop to prevent the run. This wound Crawley up a little tighter and though he hit the next ball straight to Williamson, he set off for the run as if drawn by an irresistible law of physics. He needed every bit of his diving 6’5” to beat the direct hit.

He edged the second delivery of Wagner’s next over to Watling, so Crawley’s hard-won single will constitute his test record until the next time, perhaps after his domestic record has been fortified with more consistent scoring so as to match achievement with his undoubted promise.

Crawley was on of Wagner’s five wickets. As ever he bowled with such energy and fire as to raise the question of how much more Sisyphus might have achieved had he shown Wagner’s spirit.

I left for the airport soon after Crawley’s dismissal, just before more rain ended the day an hour or so prematurely. Though two days remained, a forecast of rain for much of the last day combined with the torpor of the pitch to make a draw appear all but certain. Centuries from Williamson and Taylor confirmed the result, giving New Zealand the series win, with the usual rider that two games do not a series make.