How it should be done

Second Test

It’s lunch on day three and New Zealand have a first innings lead with wickets to come, they are well on top.  England haven’t helped themselves by dropping chances and not picking a spinner but mostly they didn’t get enough runs first up.  Burns, Sibley and Lawrence can hold their heads up and Wood smacked a few too but Crawley and Pope were out to poor shots and you just have to feel sorry for Bracey, the most unlikely selection who still seems in a state of shock.

Both teams seem to be treating this short series as a warm up for more prestigious matches in the near future.  Of the two teams New Zealand have greater excuse for doing so and from here seem to have greater strength in depth, which is hard to believe.  I get that there are injuries and I get that players need rest but Test cricket is the ultimate and leaving out star players should not be a talking point.  The game deserves the best players as does respect for the opposition.

I wrote the above at what in theory should have been the half way point of the match and after England’s bowlers had kept us in it, I looked forward to the batting fightback…  It never came and there was an air of inevitability about the collapse.  England were very poor, the pundits are saying the modern trend for quirky techniques is to blame but whatever the reason, the batting line up that I felt was coming together to be something special is making my words seem foolish, the inconsistent England is back.  Sibley, Crawley, Pope and Lawrence must all get runs or get off the team bus.  Bracey has had a dream chance handed to him, fill in your own cliché here.  New Zealand have given England a lesson in how to play test cricket and were superior in all aspects.  True we have major players out for all sorts of reasons but on the evidence of these two test matches New Zealand’s best XI beats our best XI and fair play to them. 

Now the Kiwis are in Southampton, facing India for the world test championship and at the end of a rain affected couple of days the match is evenly poised.  Either team would make a worthy winner of the new trophy and both have recently shown England how the game should be played.