12 June 5, 2022The Sunday Times 2GSCricket England v New Zealand: First Test
B
en 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 cap-
tain 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 play-
ers feel ten feet tall, but the problem
here was that they were up against a
beanpole in Jamieson who was deliv-
ering 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 pur-
poseful 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 equa-
tion. 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 occa-
sion on which either had scored fifty
in the fourth innings of a Test that
England won was at Headingley in‘Broad whirled his
hands at the crowd
in supplication,
then drilled a ball
into the pads of De
Grandhomme and
gave the appeal
everything’STOKES LEADS CHARGE
SCOREBOARD
First Test match
England v New Zealand
Lord’s (third day of five): England, with five
second-innings wickets in hand, need 61 runs to
beat New Zealand
New Zealand First Innings 132 (J M Anderson
4 for 66, M J Potts 4 for 13)
Second Innings (overnight 236-4)
D J Mitchell c Foakes b Broad 108
@T A Blundell lbw b Anderson 96
C de Grandhomme run out 0
K A Jamieson b Broad 0
T G Southee c Root b Parkinson 21
A Y Patel lbw b Potts 4
T A Boult not out 4
Extras (b 1, lb 4, w 1, nb 3) 9
Total (91.3 overs) 285
Fall of wickets 1-5, 2-30, 3-35, 4-56, 5-251,
6-251, 7-251, 8-265, 9-281.
Bowling Anderson 21-7-57-2; Broad 26-7-76-3;
Potts 20-3-55-3; Stokes 8-1-43-0; Parkinson
15.3-0-47-1; Root 1-0-2-0.
England First Innings 141 (T G Southee 4 for 55)
Second Innings
A Z Lees b Jamieson 20
Z Crawley c Southee b Jamieson 9
O J D Pope b Boult 10
J E Root not out 77
J M Bairstow b Jamieson 16
*B A Stokes c Blundell b Jamieson 54
@B T Foakes not out 9
Extras (b 6, lb 7, w 6, nb 2) 21
Total (5 wkts, 65 overs) 216
Fall of wickets 1-31, 2-32, 3-46, 4-69, 5-159.
Bowling Southee 19-5-58-0; Boult 20-3-61-1;
Jamieson 20-4-59-4; De Grandhomme
3.5-1-3-0; Mitchell 0.1-0-0-0; Patel 2-0-22-0.
Umpires M A Gough (England) and R J Tucker
(Australia).
TV umpire Paul Reiffel (Australia)
Reserve umpire M Burns (England)
Match referee R Richardson (West Indies).
Series details
Second Test: June 10-14 (Trent Bridge).
Third: June 23-27 (Headingley).SIMON
WILDECricket Correspondent2019 — 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 bound-
ary 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 prob-
ably 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 impossi-
ble. 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 wicketsfalling in as many balls, as New
Zealand lost six for 34 in 49 balls.
Rain delayed the start by 30 min-
utes, 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 miss-
ing 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 cele-
bration 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 Parkin-
son his first Test wicket.ON TV TODAY
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