Key events
Matt Henry has taken 5-3 this morning to finish with 6-29 in the innings and 11-109 in the match. I don’t know if that’s the best performance of his career, but it’s in the top one right up there. And it couldn’t have happened to a nicer bloke.
New Zealand win by 253 runs!
WICKET! England 209 all out (Cox b Henry 25) New Zealand didn’t need Baker on strike. Henry spears in a yorker that beats Cox’s premediated sweep to hit middle stump. Canny, classy bowling from a late-blooming giant of world cricket.
58th over: England 209-9 (Cox 25, Baker 0) Cox charges Jamieson and pulls a mighty six over midwicket. A clever clip through square leg brings three more and allows him to keep strike. Somebody shouted for O’Rourke to leave it, as a boundary would have meant Baker being on strike at the start of the next over, but he either didn’t hear or ignored it.
57th over: England 200-9 (Cox 16, Baker 0) This has been a rewarding series for lovers of skilful seam bowling. Ollie Robinson was player of the match at Lord’s; Matt Henry will surely win the award here.
Henry has a full over at Baker, who solidly plays out a maiden. Baker is cut from the tailend cloth as Will O’Rourke, a No11 who doesn’t score runs but has a decent defensive technique.
“The Kiwi cricket team has a decent claim to be the most likeable bunch in international sport (and ALWAYS has done),” writes Robert Wilson. “That unassuming moral rectitude, that reflexive self-deprecation and team-ethos primacy is permanently standard. They’re almost impossible to dislike. And this fluffy cuteness can obscure their brilliance and power. They’ve been a hard ask for a decade but they never seem to shake off Graham Gooch’s (admittedly fabulous) Ilford 2nd XI slur.
“Amid the obscenity of the Trumpian Bread & Circuses kickball tournament in the US, it’s cleansing to see a bunch of blokes who could all be that neighbour who uncomplainingly lends you a perfectly maintained and beautifully oiled power-tool that you don’t know how to use. And make no mistake, they have absolutely ****ing CANED England.
“I’ve enjoyed every over of it.”
I couldn’t put it nearly as well myself.
56th over: England 200-9 (Cox 16, Baker 0) Cox charges Jamieson, who drops the ball shorter as a result. Cox improvises nicely to uppercut over the slips for four and bring up England’s 200. He is a serious talent.
55th over: England 196-9 (Cox 12, Baker 0) With Cox on strike, the field is spread for Matt Henry’s hat-trick ball. I was going to say, ‘That’s a bit weird, Tom Latham should be sacked,’ etc, but on reflection I like that it captures New Zealand’s side-over-self philosophy.
Cox defends the hat-trick ball. This time he gives Baker the last two deliveries to survive. Good boy that he is, Baker obliges.
54th over: England 195-9 (Cox 11, Baker 0) Jordan Cox gives Sonny Baker one ball to survive. Good boy that he is, Baker obliges.
“I don’t get all the pessimism,” says Paul Griffin. “In addition to your list of joyful vignettes, the test has been a Tactical Great Leap Forward for cricket and English sport in general. We have established that deploying your captain out of position, in the north-east of England idyll to be precise, is not optimal. Now this is resolved, the only way is up. I hear Tommy Tuchel has abandoned his thought experiment of sending Harry Kane to the Holy Island of Lindisfarne for the next World Cup game. Kissinger, Kasparov, and Sun Tzu must be looking on in envy.”
53rd over: England 192-9 (Cox 8, Baker 0) That was the last ball of the over, so there may be no hat-trick ball. In the last five years, Matt Henry has taken 114 Test wickets at – and you’ll like this – an average of 19.70.
WICKET! England 192-9 (Tongue c Mitchell b Henry 0)
You ripper! Matt Henry has taken his first ten-for in Test cricket, and he’s on a hat-trick as well. Josh Tongue edged another immaculate delivery to first slip and was taken by Daryl Mitchell.
Henry snaps his head back and roars with delight. Honestly, this is about as good as flat-pitch seam bowling gets.
WICKET! England 192-8 (Henry b Fisher 0)
Even when he doesn’t hit the stumps, Matt Henry hits the stumps. Fisher feels for a slightly wider ball and drags it back onto leg stump to give Henry his ninth wicket of the match. He is so good.
52nd over: England 192-7 (Cox 8, Fisher 0) Cox times Jamieson nicely to the cover boundary. The game is done, and Cox is unlikely to play at Trent Bridge on Thursday, but it’s still an important innings because he can put some credit in the bank.
“I enjoyed Andy Bull’s article,” writes Tom van der Gucht. “McCullum has brought some amazing moments for us all, but most coaches seem to have ‘their method’ that works brilliantly until it doesn’t.
“Although I’m drifting off cricket and across sports, I was rewatching Winning Time and the coaching revolution at the LA Lakers lately and it reminded me how few coaches are able to mimic Ferguson with Man U and sustain success over such a long period.
I wonder whether the ECB will turn to what’s viewed as a safe pair of hands if McCullum goes. Could we be preparing ourselves for the third coming of Peter Moores… county cricket’s top coach of the 21st century and one of life’s good guys?”
If McCullum gets sacked after the Ashes, fine, but to damn him based on this game, after all the upheaval and weirdness, makes no sense to me. When history is written, I suspect the received wisdom will be that Bazball died after the India tour of 2023-24. Yas Rana’s point that McCullum was a much better fit for an experienced team in the doldrums than an inexperienced team feels spot on.
51st over: England 188-7 (Cox 4, Fisher 0) A double-wicket maiden from Henry, and why not.
WICKET! England 188-7 (Archer b Henry 0)
Make that eight wickets for Matt Henry. Jofra Archer has no chance with a wicket-to-wicket grubber and is bowled second ball for nought.
WICKET! England 188-6 (Root LBW b Henry 77)
The end is nigh. Root plays defensively at an off-cutter from Henry that snakes past the inside edge to hit the back pad. He reviews, just in case, but that was a clean LBW. Henry has dismissed the big two, Root and Brook, in both innings has match figures of 38.1-6-108-7 on a flat pitch. It’s been a wicket-to-wicket masterclass.
50th over: England 188-5 (Root 77, Cox 4) Cox hits Kyle Jamieson through the covers for three before Root edges a good ball on the bounce to second slip.
“Good morning, Rob and Happy Solstice,” says John Starbuck. “We are at the peak of summer but at this rate it won’t be remembered fondly by future generations, going by the pretty miserable performance of England cricket. What consolation can we take from this match?”
Crikey, loads. Jofra Archer v Glenn Phillips, Matt Henry’s magnificence, the first Test century by a known ADHDer, Sonny Baker’s joie de vivre, Matt Fisher’s fifty, Harry Brook’s madcap genius, Joe Root’s 14,000th Test run, the (seeming) improvement in Ben Stokes’s mental health, Rachin Ravindra’s strokeplay, Henry Nicholls shuffling into the spotlight. I could go on, but luckily for you there’s some cricket to talk about. And a wicket.
49th over: England 184-5 (Root 76, Cox 1) Henry sets the agenda with a perfect first delivery on off stump that is defended awkwardly by Root. After Root takes a single later in the over, Jordan Cox gets off the mark from his 15th delivery. Can’t imagine that has happened too often.
Tanya Aldred
Ben Stokes and Gus Atkinson have been withdrawn from the remainder of Durham and Surrey’s ongoing County Championship matches at the request of the England and Wales Cricket Board [ECB].
“Ben Stokes has been withdrawn from the remainder of Durham’s County Championship match against Northamptonshire at the request of the ECB,” a club statement on X said. “Colin Ackermann will replace Stokes in the Durham 11.”
Neither player was selected for the second Test after they broke the team curfew celebrating England’s first Test win against New Zealand at Lord’s. The interim captain, Joe Root, was then handed an inexperienced side who have struggled against New Zealand at The Oval, and start Sunday needing 281 more runs to win with just five wickets in hand.
The players are ready to roll. Matt Henry will open up to Joe Root.
England this, England that. It’s time to talk about New Zealand, who calmly parked their defeat at Lord’s and have quietly outclassed England in the second Test.
Glenn Phillips’ century, the first in Test cricket by a known ADHDer, was a multi-faceted masterpiece; Henry Nicholls played an innings of which Kane Williamson would be proud; and Matt Henry has been quite majestic.
There’s so much more to his performance than numbers, but the detail of Harry Brook’s performance provides a snapshot of Henry’s brilliance.
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Brook v Henry 4 runs, 19 balls, 2 wickets, SR 21
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Brook v the rest 78 runs, 67 balls, 0 wickets, SR 116
Imagine restricting Harry Brook to a strike-rate of 21, never mind dismissing him twice at an average of 2.
Simon Burnton
Josh Tongue admitted England have missed the influence of Ben Stokes after a day in which they crumbled to the brink of defeat in the second Test against New Zealand at the Oval. While they were doing so the team’s full-time captain, forced out of international duty for disciplinary reasons, was 275 miles north at Chester-le-Street, scoring a swashbuckling 95 for Durham in the County Championship.
England ended the fourth day on 182 for five, a distant 281 from victory, after the tourists scored 362 in their second innings. The home side have worked this week under the interim captaincy of Joe Root, on whose back their slender hopes once again lie, after he became the second player in Test history to pass 14,000 career runs on his way to an unbeaten 75,
“Yeah, we’ve missed him,” Tongue said of Stokes. “He’s an unbelievable player. Obviously I made my debut when he was captain, so I’ve got huge respect for Stokesy and it’s always nice seeing him get some runs as well. But obviously we’ve got a lot of leaders in our team. Rooty has stepped up as captain, he’s obviously an unbelievable player and an unbelievable leader.”
Andy Bull
At the end of the fourth day’s play here the abiding question wasn’t whether England could complete a record-breaking fourth innings chase or even if they could bat the match out to secure the draw. It was why everyone is still watching an England team coached by Brendon McCullum six months after he ought to have moved on from the job.
The way we tell it in this country, McCullum’s backstory as England coach begins on 2 January 2013 when, in his first match as New Zealand’s Test captain, the team were bowled out for 45 by South Africa at Cape Town. Legend has it this was the watershed Test. In a management meeting that evening, McCullum laid out his ideas about the way the game should be played. The hard-charging, happy-go-lucky approach that has characterised England’s cricket in the past four years was born right here, when, New Zealand’s coach, Mike Hesson, said, McCullum was first empowered “to do the job the way he wanted it done”.
There is a chapter missing in this version. Everyone involved in New Zealand cricket knows it by rote, but it’s not often discussed in England. It’s all about what happened in the months running up to that match, when McCullum’s predecessor as captain, Ross Taylor, was forced out of his job by Hesson, who was an old teammate of McCullum’s.
Here’s more on the news that Ben Stokes is back, baby
Ali Martin
What do you get if you pick three debutants, two more with one cap each, a strike-bowler who is returning to Test cricket after two solid months of sending down four-over spells in India, and hand the captaincy to a guy who has spent the past four years with the job happily in his rear-view mirror?
Throw in a seasoned opposition side like Tom Latham’s New Zealand and the answer, England have discovered, is the need to knock off a monstrous fourth-innings target of 463 – or bat out nearly five sessions – to avoid a defeat that will invite questions beyond simply that optimistic selection.
Stokes withdrawn from Durham match
So, about that third Test. Ben Stokes and Gus Atkinson have been withdrawn from Durham and Surrey’s ongoing County Championship matches at the request of the ECB. The services of Benoit Blanc will not be required on this matter.
Do me a quick favour: close your eyes and just imagine the noise when Stokes walks out to bat at Trent Bridge. It might even register on the Headingley 2019ometer.
Preamble
This shouldn’t take long. New Zealand need five wickets to wrap up an emphatic victory at The Oval and set up a mouth-moistening series decider at Trent Bridge later in the week. The only teeny-tiny hope for England is the not dissimilar precedent of Aukland 2013. On that occasion they were four down going into the last day, with one of the not-out batters a pre-pubescent Joe Root one of the not-out batters.
They saved that Test, and the series, with a performance of immense defiance led by Matt Prior. (Funny how things work out. At 31, Prior seemed to be moving inexorably towards greatness; 18 months later he was done as a Test cricketer.)
Realistically, on a day like today, ‘remember when’ is the lowest form of conversation. England are going to lose – decisively, deservedly – and tomorrow’s headlines will be about the future. One subject will be discussed more than any other: what part, if any, Ben Stokes and the rest of the absent Oval Five play in that series decider.