If the first game of this series was ruined by a downpour, the second was won by a deluge. A 129-run partnership between Phil Salt and Harry Brook powered the tourists towards a score of 236 for four, England smashing 34 boundaries and the record score on this ground, leaving New Zealand a forlorn chase which ended when their last wicket fell with two overs remaining and 65 still required.
The Black Caps demonstrated some mighty power-hitting of their own but they simply could not do it often enough, and too regularly lost wickets in trying, with England’s fielding despite a swirling wind as impeccable as their opponents’ had been unreliable. Adil Rashid took four wickets, and Jordan Cox three catches, as New Zealand were dismissed for 171.
If Salt’s 85 made him the night’s leading scorer he was outshone by his captain, who ended with a 35-ball 78 – during their partnership Brook faced one more ball, and scored 32 more runs. “When someone comes out and plays like that, my job is very easy: get them on strike,” said Salt, who had appeared to be on course for a fifth international T20 century before Brook started hogging the attention, and the strike.
“The difference between me going on and getting [a century] and not was getting Brooky on strike and 100 times out of 100 I’d like to be at the other end watching that again. You have to take ego out of it. Everything is team first, and that suits me down to the ground.”
The prelude to this match had followed the precise script of the first game of the series, as if the fates had decided that Christchurch deserved to find out what would have happened in that unfinished fixture had rain not fallen. There were two unchanged teams, the same result at the toss, the same decision made by New Zealand’s Mitchell Santner. But once the action started the plot twisted almost immediately, and where England had found it such a struggle to score on the same surface 48 hours previously this time Salt heaved the second delivery over midwicket for six, and Saturday’s trickle of runs turned into a flood.
Jos Buttler was the only batter who did not partake of the feast, miscuing to mid-off in the second over for just four. Jacob Bethell shone only briefly, scoring 24 off 12 before, having emphatically cleared mid-off for sixes off two successive Michael Bracewell deliveries – the Black Caps’ decision to use the off-spinner in the powerplay looking decidedly misguided as his first five balls of the night went for 21 – he steered the next straight to the fielder positioned there.
Enter Brook, for an innings of two halves: the first in which he was irresistible, the second in which he was equally irresistible, but which really should never have happened. He had scored precisely half of his eventual total when he lifted Matt Henry down the ground and Jimmy Neesham ran round from long-on, stooped, and fumbled – the most glaring of a string of errors in the field by the hosts. “When guys are going like that you need to take chances while you can,” Santner said. “We pride ourselves on our fielding and you can’t give good players second chances.”
By then Brook had already deposited one ball on to the pavilion roof and he would clear the ground twice more, one massive six off Kyle Jamieson landing in the car park, mercifully without the soundtrack of smashed glass and wailing alarm.
Jamieson eventually dismissed both Brook and Salt in the space of three balls in the 18th over. Salt had been given a head start of 39, his score when Brook emerged from the dressing room, but his captain was just a couple of clean strikes from overtaking him when he pulled to midwicket, and Salt then lifted the next ball he faced to long-off. It would be inaccurate to suggest that by then the damage had been done, because there was more coming: Sam Curran hoisted the final ball of that over down the ground for six, and in the next Tom Banton plundered three fours and a six – England scored more runs in boundaries alone than they had in total on the same surface two days earlier.
New Zealand’s hopes of successfully climbing the run mountain were seriously damaged in just the second over, which started with Tim Robinson giving Cox the first of his catches and continued with Rachin Ravindra coming out, hitting his first two balls for four and nicking his third to Buttler. But it was England’s spinners who sent them definitively tumbling towards defeat, Liam Dawson and Rashid taking one wicket in each of four successive overs. There remained time for Neesham and Santner to combine for a boundary-bothering partnership of 57 off just 23, but by then they needed not so much runs as miracles.
