2GS The Sunday Times June 5, 2022 13Ben Stokes was almost
in the pavilion when Paul Reiffel,
the third umpire, told Michael
Gough that England were in
fact not five wickets down.
Stokes was bowled by Colin
de Grandhomme one off 19
balls. But the bowler had
overstepped (left). He was
eventually out (main
picture) gloving a ramp
to the wicketkeeper.STOKES FALLS
AFTER LET OFFBrendon McCullum’s first mission
statement as England’s new head
coach was simple. He implored the
team to score buckets of runs,
prioritise wicket-taking over economy
rates, take their catches and “chase
the ball hard to the boundary”. For
the first two hours of his tenure on
Thursday all went to plan, even if
poor Jack Leach took that
commitment to the chase so literally
that he ended up falling over the
boundary and concussing himself.
At that point — lunch on the first
day — New Zealand were 39 for six.
James Anderson and Stuart Broad,
reunited as the opening pair, were
immaculate in their approach, and,
as the evidence of six slips to
Anderson illustrated, they were
committed to wicket-taking over run-
saving. Some fine catches had been
taken and the debutant Matthew
Potts had slotted perfectly into the
attack, taking the wicket of Kane
Williamson with his fifth ball and two
more in an impressive first spell.
Lunch on the first day at Lord’s
would have tasted especially good.
Much of the fare on the field has
been less palatable for McCullum
since. An odds-on England win had
turned into an 80 per cent chance of
a New Zealand one by Friday
evening. Familiar failings resurfaced.
No England batter made a fifty in the
first innings, there was a middle-
order collapse, precious little from
the tail, early inroads when England
took the field again, but impotency
once conditions eased and more top-
order fragility in the second innings.
Progress to the promised land will
be slow and often painful.
Test cricket-wise, England are in a
dilemma. In seam-friendly conditions
their attack is peerless. Anderson and
Broad are a coach’s dream, able to
execute specific bowling plans armed
with more data and diagrams than
the BBC weather centre. They are
almost like computer-programmed
robots, with flair to add. They rose
magnificently to the occasion again
yesterday morning once the second
new ball was taken.
Reared in the data-decade, Potts
was an excellent accomplice. County
players are now used to receiving
extensive Hawk-Eye-type pitchmaps
and other graphics illustrating where
they need to bowl and evaluatingOF THE ENTERTAINERS
England need an
X factor to take
wickets when the
ball doesn’t move
for the seamers
SIMON
HUGHESBroad, right, and Anderson remain peerless in seam-friendly conditions‘Parkinson is also
not the answer to
the dearth of spin
options, despite
taking his first Test
wicket yesterday’how effectively they operated to the
plan. As a line-bowler rather than
someone who relies on swing, the
Durham quick could be confident
that his successful method in county
cricket — bowling zestily in that
fourth-stump corridor and utilising
the wobble-seam delivery pioneered
by Anderson and Broad — would
work in seam-friendly conditions in a
Test. They did. Seven wickets at a
cost of 68 runs on his debut was the
impressive result for the 23-year-old.
The problem is, England can’t bat
in such helpful conditions and —
deprived of a string of injured quick
bowlers — can’t bowl if it doesn’t
seam. There was no enforcer when
the pitch eased and the ball went soft
on Friday during Tom Blundell and
Daryl Mitchell’s 195-run stand,
though Ben Stokes tried manfully.
And Matt Parkinson is not the answer
to England’s dearth of spin options,
despite taking his first Test wicket.
On the anniversary of Shane
Warne’s ball of the century, it was
interesting to contrast Parkinson’s
method with those of other leg
spinners. Romantics will have
welcomed his belated introduction,
but his average speed of 45mph is too
slow for Test cricket (Warne averaged
49mph and most others are 50mph17
Of the 20 New
Zealand wickets
to fall during
this Test came
when the ball
was less than
25 overs oldJoe Root, in his first Test
after he stood down
from the captaincy,
needs another 23 runs
to get to 10,000 Test
runs. He would be the
14th player to reach the
landmark, with Sachin
Tendulkar way out in
front on 15,921 runs
from his 200 Test
matches. Next on the
list above Root are
Younus Khan
with 10,099,
Sunil
Gavaskar with
10,122 and
Steve Waugh
with 10,927.CAN ROOT GET
TO 10,000?79
Times Root has
passed 50 in Tests —
25 times he has gone
on to score a hundredPHILIP BROWNplus) and his action, releasing the ball
from a very low, front-on position
with his arm beyond the
perpendicular, makes it hard for him
to impart significant side-spin and
extract bounce. To be a threat, his
action needs a significant overhaul.
If T20 is a batters game, Test
cricket (in England) is not. The most
successful batsmen acknowledge
that. A major turning point in the
match came on Friday when New
Zealand were 73 for four in their
second innings. After the two teams’
first insubstantial efforts — no
individual 50 in either first innings
for the first time in a Lord’s Test since
1954 — Anderson, Broad and Potts
had removed New Zealand’s rusty
top order second time around.
As the sun came out, Mitchell and
Blundell dug in, Mitchell grinding out
22 from 55 balls. The second ball of
Anderson’s eighth over — the 31st of
the innings — was straightish and on a
good length. Betraying the time he
has spent in the past two months
putting bat to ball at the IPL, Mitchell
essayed a big drive. His patience had
obviously elapsed. It does after an
exclusive diet of T20. The ball swung
a touch, skewed off the outside edge,
and flew just wide of fourth slip to the
boundary. He tried a similar shot to
the next ball and played and missed.
After that lucky double escape, the
penny dropped. He realised this was
a Test. There was an opportunity to
bat for the rest of the day if he applied
himself. And he and the more
compact Blundell did. They
accumulated, only drove when the
ball was a half-volley, and recognised
that the key to Test-match batting —
especially in England — is to have
wickets intact past the 40th over.
With the quality of seam bowling
in this match — more than 1,800 Test
wickets between the two opening
pairs and the emerging force that is
Kyle Jamieson (66 Test wickets at a
cost of 18.72) — keeping the top order
intact past the 40th over is proving
mighty difficult. Even if England win
this Test, solving that issue is
McCullum’s greatest challenge.MARC ASPLAND0
Times Root has made
a century in the fourth
innings of a Test — he
has nine in the first,
ten in the second and
six in the third