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

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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.

Three days at Hagley Park

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

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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.