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England vs New Zealand 3rd Test | ENG win by 7 wkts to win series 3-0


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2 hours ago, Bill said:

I don't believe I've ever seen a 2-day test before. This kind of schoolboy cricket is killing the red ball game.

It is white ball mentality that is taking over the test game, can't see how it will be reveresed given the younger generations limited attention span, just about stretching to 50 over games. 

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  • Rousseau changed the title to England vs New Zealand 1st Test | NZ 132 & 58-4 - ENG 141
36 minutes ago, ChelseaBoy said:

It is white ball mentality that is taking over the test game, can't see how it will be reveresed given the younger generations limited attention span, just about stretching to 50 over games. 

Absolutely. The way Alex Lees first came to the wicket yesterday and started swinging at every ball told us everything that's wrong with cricket.

 

Having said that, the Aussies are able to field many of the same players in test and one day cricket and they seem able to adapt quite well. 

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  • Rousseau changed the title to England vs New Zealand 1st Test | NZ 132 & 236-4 - ENG 141

I think I saw some Test Match batting, yesterday, from the two Kiwis. 

It would be churlish not to wish them places on the Lord's Honours' Board.

 

CRICKET | MIKE ATHERTON

England given lesson in batting resilience by pugnacious New Zealand pair

Lord’s (second day of five): New Zealand, with six second-innings wickets in hand, are 227 runs ahead of England

Mike Atherton

, Chief Cricket Correspondent

Friday June 03 2022, 8.00pm, The Times

 

At 3 o’clock on a hazy Lord’s afternoon, that rarest of breeds appeared on the scene as Matt Parkinson, England cap No 705, marked out his run and prepared to bowl for the first time in a Test match. Joe Denly had sent down a couple of overs of serviceable leg spin in the 2019 Ashes but, before that, you had to go back to Ian Salisbury more than a quarter of a century ago for the last time an English leg spinner bowled in a Lord’s Test.

It was a noteworthy moment and not just because of the rarity value and the surprise factor — Parkinson having become the first concussion substitute to be capped by England, after the injury to Jack Leach the day before — but also because it meant, for the first time in this peculiar game, that bat had begun to dominate ball. Leg spin has always been a last port of call for English cricket and some imagination and variety was now required as a touch of sense finally settled on the scene.

The reason for Parkinson’s introduction was the first sizeable partnership of the match, between Tom Blundell and Daryl Mitchell, who began to tilt the game back towards New Zealand after a difficult morning and then turned the screw throughout a draining afternoon for England’s bowlers. They came together in the 23rd over, with the situation a desperate one, and after Mitchell stroked the final ball of the day to the long-off boundary, they walked off together cradling a partnership worth 180, with individual hundreds beckoning for both.

It was a terrific partnership, full of good sense and purpose, and may be a matchwinning one. Mitchell would probably not have played in this game had Henry Nicholls passed a fitness test and he batted with the air of a man determined to take his opportunity, while Blundell possesses all the fighting qualities of his predecessor, BJ Watling. Both were determined to make England pay for some sloppiness the previous day, when a strong position was surrendered with some feeble batting.

It was quite a turnaround given that no one had scored a half-century in the match until Blundell slapped Matthew Potts to the square-cover boundary 30 minutes into the final session and Mitchell swiftly followed suit an over later. They then kept abreast of each other until the close. “It is a new-ball wicket,” Blundell said after play; as the ball softened, the pitch fell to sleep and the Lord’s crowd took a breath after the helter-skelter events of the day before, England toiled and the match began to slip away.

 

These two are archetypal New Zealand cricketers: understated, effective and versatile. England found that out to their cost when Mitchell snatched the T20 World Cup semi-final from their grasp in November and only occasionally, such as when he twice tried to drive James Anderson back over his head and missed, did he misread the situation this time. Blundell is a croucher and hunches over his stance in rather careworn fashion, but leaps at every chance when the bowlers drop short.

The presence of some of the finest swing and seam bowlers the sport can offer — before this match Stuart Broad, Tim Southee, Trent Boult and Anderson could boast more than 1,800 Test wickets between them — and the evident rustiness of the visiting top- order batsmen, not that England’s had such a ready excuse to hand, meant that batting had looked challenging until they came together. By lunchtime on the second day 23 wickets had fallen.

 

England’s lead was a slender nine runs by the time the final three wickets had been taken in the morning — Parkinson’s first Test runs having taken his team into the black — and New Zealand had lost three of their own before lunch. Those who were in possession of third-day tickets were suddenly in danger of having to look for alternative arrangements. But of all the many qualities this New Zealand side possess, resilience is among the most notable.

The bigger names had come and gone by then. Tom Latham and Kane Williamson, the best of the visiting batsmen, had fallen to outside edges, Williamson the more culpable given the expansive nature of the shot as he looked to force off the back foot. He is in one of those trots. Great players suffer them rarely, but suffer them they do, and Williamson’s second low score of the match put another smile on Potts’s face; it was quite a scalp to get once on debut, never mind twice.

Potts bowled an incisive spell either side of lunch. After Williamson’s attempted force ended up in the hands of third slip, Latham tickled a catch to the wicketkeeper, an edge so fine that Ben Foakes did not appeal. With Will Young having edged Anderson to Foakes in the third over, New Zealand lunched uneasily, three wickets down.

Sunshine greeted the players in the afternoon and, for 40 minutes, Devon Conway and Mitchell looked as secure as any partnership had done, a sign of what was to come. Conway eased one gorgeous drive down the ground off Broad, bringing back memories of the languid way in which he had stroked his double hundred here a year ago. But then came a bit of luck for England and Broad as Conway tickled an innocuous leg-side ball to the wicketkeeper.

Eventually Stokes was forced to introduce Parkinson, who bowled six loopy-doopy overs from the Pavilion End initially — not the favoured end for a leg spinner given the nature of the slope. He bowled slowly through the air, encouraging the batsmen to leave their crease, which they did frequently and he was less accurate than he might have been. He was given a second spell from the same end and was switched to the Nursery End just before the close, without offering much threat.

Stokes took matters into his own hands after tea, bowling a spell of short stuff from the Pavilion End, a tactic that almost brought an immediate dividend when Mitchell spliced an attempted hook over Broad at mid-on. The sight of one slip and three men patrolling the leg-side boundary told the story of a team whose fast-bowling stocks are depleted and England’s didn’t quite have enough devil when it mattered. Ticket-holders for Saturday will be thrilled a full day awaits; England’s new management less so.

 

 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/england-given-lesson-in-batting-resilience-by-pugnacious-new-zealand-pair-xnq9tp3tk

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  • Rousseau changed the title to England vs New Zealand 1st Test | NZ 132 & 285 - ENG 141 & 21-0
  • Rousseau changed the title to England vs New Zealand 1st Test | NZ 132 & 285 - ENG 141 & 31-1

The bowlers eventually contained NZ. Got the makings of a decent single innings match if England can manage to bat a bit. I’d accept a twenty run defeat but with a wicket down, from previous form a total for the innings of a hundred and twenty is not improbable.

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The Kiwi Zimbabwean, de Grandhomme, will have nightmares over his lapse in concentration, leading to that run out, the import of which is that

it's very much ENG's to lose.....

 

 

CRICKET | SIMON WILDE

Ben Stokes and Joe Root lead charge of the entertainers as England chase victory

Lord’s (day three of five): England need 61 runs to win

Simon Wilde Cricket Correspondent

Saturday June 04 2022, 7.00pm, The Sunday Times

 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ben-stokes-and-joe-root-lead-charge-of-the-entertainers-as-england-chase-victory-t575xvdhk

 

Ben Stokes said he wanted his new-look England team to play freewheeling and attractive cricket and no one could argue with the drama provided across the first three days of this Lord’s showpiece. After several ups and downs it may yet result in a much-needed victory — what would be only a second win in 18 Tests — as Stokes and his players dragged themselves back into a potentially winning position against the world Test champions.

Having taken the final six New Zealand wickets before lunch, their pursuit of 277 to win proved not to be for the faint-hearted, but England refused to take the defensive option. The chase ebbed and flowed and had everyone guessing every bit as much as when these sides met in the World Cup final here three years ago.

Now as then, Stokes — on his 31st birthday — was centre-stage, marking his first Test as England’s official captain with a fifty during a partnership of 90 with Joe Root, his predecessor, without which the game would surely already be lost. Stokes was fast taking the game away from New Zealand when he twice hit Ajaz Patel into the stand, only to fall for 54 as he tried to limbo under a short ball from Kyle Jamieson which brushed his glove.

The new head coach, Brendon McCullum, had said beforehand that he wanted to make his England players feel ten feet tall, but the problem here was that they were up against a beanpole in Jamieson who was delivering the ball from that height. He bowled brilliantly to take four of the five England wickets that fell.

After Stokes departed, Root stepped up a gear and moved to his own fifty from 107 balls. But with England sporting a lengthy tail, much depended on him and Ben Foakes staying together. A streaky edge from Root brought the target below 80. The sixth-wicket pair survived and by stumps had added 56 with some purposeful play against a tiring attack.

 

England will resume this morning on 216 for five, needing another 61 to win and, crucially, with another 15 overs to be bowled with the old ball. 

The second new ball has been largely, if not totally, taken out of the equation. Root is unbeaten on 77 from 131 balls and within touching distance of making an outstanding start to this new phase of his career.

When Stokes had joined Root at 69 for four, 208 were needed. Had one of them gone early, a three-day defeat beckoned. Remarkably, the only occasion on which either had scored fifty in the fourth innings of a Test that England won was at Headingley in 2019 — the match against Australia that Stokes famously won with an unbeaten 135.

 

After his disappointing first innings, Root was not in the mood to give anything away, but Stokes began frantically. He did not want to be shackled — he would later greet Patel’s arrival by hitting the first of his three sixes — and unconvincingly opted to dance down the track to Colin de Grandhomme’s medium-pacers. When he then dragged a drive into his stumps he appeared to have got his comeuppance, until it turned out that De Grandhomme had overstepped.

Was this to be a turning point? It certainly seemed like it as Stokes, then with only one run to his name, gradually found his groove, while De Grandhomme soon hobbled off with a damaged ankle. Stokes’s first boundary was a slice over the slips but he later struck the ball with authority.

England’s rejigged top three again lacked substance, mustering only 39 between them. Alex Lees shaped well with four crisp boundaries, only to be bowled offering no shot to Jamieson — who brought one down the slope from a wide angle — for his sixth successive score between 20 and 30.

Jamieson produced another fine delivery to have Zak Crawley caught at third slip, before Trent Boult found an even better ball to uproot Ollie Pope’s off stump: it swung in before cutting away. Pope’s scores in his first outing at No 3: seven and ten.

 

With no red-ball cricket after his stint in the IPL, Jonny Bairstow deserves some slack — and he has had a big influence with his fielding — but his beans were jumping here and moments after taking three fours off five balls from Boult, he was bowled through the gate by what would probably have been the last ball of a long first spell from Jamieson.

 

England’s target was stiff, but on a decent day-three pitch not impossible. On ten previous occasions they have chased down 277 or more, most recently when hunting precisely that figure against Pakistan at Old Trafford in 2020.

 

The home team had at least given themselves a chance by winning the morning session thanks to good use of the second new ball, spearheaded by Stuart Broad revving up a Lord’s crowd that he sensed were looking for excitement. Broad is a man with two Test hat-tricks and he was now the central protagonist in three wickets falling in as many balls, as New Zealand lost six for 34 in 49 balls.

Rain delayed the start by 30 minutes, before play began with one over from Broad before the new ball was due. This was enough for Daryl Mitchell to reach a deserved century, prompting ecstatic celebrations from a man who would not have played had Henry Nicholls been fit.

His departure, caught behind to a ball from Broad that was angled in and bounced, ended a stand of 195 with Tom Blundell and opened up the game. Broad whirled his hands at the crowd, then drilled a ball into the pads of De Grandhomme. Broad gave the appeal everything — the ball was missing leg stump — but in the kerfuffle De Grandhomme sashayed out of his crease while Pope gathered the ball and threw down the stumps with the batsman a yard short. Next ball, Broad took out Jamieson’s off stump with an in-ducker and went off on a lap of celebration pursued by his team-mates.

James Anderson trapped Blundell leg-before four short of his hundred, before the two Matthews, Potts and Parkinson, polished off the tail, Southee’s catch to slip giving Parkinson his first Test wicket.

 

 

 

Edited by Uilleam
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  • Rousseau changed the title to England vs New Zealand 1st Test | NZ 132 & 285 - ENG 141 & 216-5
  • Rousseau changed the title to England vs New Zealand 1st Test | ENG won by 5 wkts

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