England came into the final day of the second Test with the avowed intent of approaching a monumental task with “all guns blazing” as Joe Root said the previous evening. But instead of a thunderous finish to a brief but exhilarating series there was the spectacle of damp England squibs squibbing, as New Zealand simply overwhelmed them.
Root himself departed for a second-ball duck as England, in pursuit of what would be a record run chase of 455, were bowled out for 255. Only Alastair Cook, once more, held firm, making 56, and more runs, 309, than anyone in the two matches, before he was sixth out as the top order folded after Adam Lyth was dismissed early on. Jos Buttler survived a nasty blow to his left hand to make 73 as the game entered its final stages before he was last out, lbw to Mark Craig offering no stroke, an apt metaphor perhaps for England’s resistance. There were 19 overs and one ball of the match still available.
New Zealand’s victory here, only their fifth in England and which levels the series at one match each, was, at 199 runs, only five short of their largest ever in terms of runs, not just against England but against anyone. In Bridgetown, in 2002, they beat West Indies by 204 runs and Sri Lanka were trounced by 193 runs in Wellington earlier this year.
Until this one the heaviest defeat suffered by England against New Zealand was by 189 runs, in Hamilton in 2008, which led to the culling of two bowlers, one, Matthew Hoggard, never to play for England again. In the final analysis it is hard to credit that at Lord’s they won a match having been 30 for four on the first morning and 134 behind on first innings whereas here they have been hammered, having at one stage been only 173 behind on first innings, on a good pitch, with all 10 wickets in hand.
So in the space of little more than a week, while Brendon McCullum’s Black Caps, beaten but unbowed at Lord’s,continued to play a high standard of delightfully ebullient, aggressive cricket, batting at a sustained pace almost unprecedented in Test cricket, England have swerved alarmingly from the sublime at Lord’s, if not to the ridiculous, then to the far from sublime at Headingley.
The chances of them making a real impact on the target set them were always slender but the batting was as abject as some of the England bowling had been: there is no disgrace in getting bowled out by Trent Boult, as skilful a left-arm paceman as there is in the game, but there were wickets here for Kane Williamson, three of them, a bowler whom McCullum kept slipping into the attack for an over here and an over there, and grinning broadly as it brought a result each time.
If McCullum, the newly appointed officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit, was outgunned by Cook at Lord’s, then there was scarcely a thing that he touched here that did not bring its rewards: Williamson on and wickets came; move Williamson to backward short-leg for the off-spinner Craig and two balls later Ian Bell obligingly pops a catch there as if he had not noticed the change. It was high-class generalship.
England now finish the series on one of the lows that we can expect from a developing team from time to time but this one comes at a worse psychological time than if the two results had been reversed. There is white-ball international cricket now and the next time the Test squad assembles will be in five weeks’ time for the first Ashes Test in Cardiff. In the interim, while there is no doubt that members of this Test side, more than some might have anticipated, will be omitted from England’s limited-overs plans – some of them permanently – there is precious little championship cricket on offer for them.
Any hope of a grand gesture was derailed in the first hour. The wintry storm overnight had gone but there was a gale that bent the trees in the Kirkstall Lane, snapped the flags at their poles and had the new Headingley floodlights swaying. There remained a little cloud cover, though, and with the ball still newish there was enough movement for Boult to find the outside edge of Lyth’s bat once more.
Ballance, next in, is a fellow struggling with his technique and tried to compensate for the movement deep into the crease that has left his off stump exposed outside the bat, by standing out of his crease before making the same backward step. It proved to no avail as Boult’s brilliant yorker almost knocked his feet away to bowl him. Bell then followed, lazily turning Craig’s off-spin to Williamson as if it was a catching drill and then two balls later Root, turning the same bowler a little squarer and a little firmer, was aghast to see the ball hit Tom Latham, at short square-leg, firmly in the chest before he clung on to the rebound.
After losing three wickets for a single run in the space of 19 deliveries there was really no way back.
