HOWZAT!
England: 58 all out Williamson: 91 not out
2.18pm:
Trent Boult gets Alastair Cook for the sixth time in his career. Cook had to play at a ball moving away and edges to second slip. England 6-1. 2.25pm:
Joe Root goes for a six-ball duck. Boult brings the ball back in, Root shapes to drive and it slices between bat and pad. England 6-2. 2.33pm:
Dawid Malan plays a tentative prod and edges to wicketkeeper BJ Watling. England 16-3. 2.40pm:
Mark Stoneman pushes at Tim Southee and the edge flies to Watling. The innings is in freefall. England 18-4. 2.44pm:
Boult goes straight through Ben Stokes for a duck, hitting the top of his off stump. England 18-5. 2.48pm:
Jonny Bairstow chips a return catch back low to Southee. England have lost four for two in 20 balls. England 18-6. 2.57pm:
Chris Woakes plays all around a Boult in-swinger. Boult has five wickets in the space of his first 42 balls. England 23-7. 3.03pm:
Southee bowls Moeen Ali with a straight full toss. You can’t make this up. England 23-8. 3.11pm:
Captain Kane Williamson takes a stunning one-handed catch at gully to dismiss Stuart Broad, the fifth and final duck of the innings. England 27-9. 3.34pm:
Jimmy Anderson lobs Boult to point. Boult finishes with his best test figures of 6-32. England all out for 58 in 20.4 overs.
New Zealand are determined they won’t get ahead of themselves after a stunning first day of pink ball test cricket in this country.
Even so, they have every right to savour perhaps the country’s finest single day of test cricket, winning days excluded.
From start to finish yesterday, they were utterly dominant.
Whether it was to mark the 50th test at Eden Park, or the arrival of pink ball tests, it could hardly have been a job done any better by the hosts.
And if you want to demur over the day’s place in New Zealand cricket history, you certainly cannot argue that it was the country’s best first session of a test.
England, sent in, were dismissed for 58 in 20.4 overs — or 124 balls if you prefer — 26 minutes before the first scheduled break. It was their sixth lowest all-time total.
New Zealand were 30 ahead by the dinner break, and at stumps, captain Kane Williamson was on 91, in touching distance of a New Zealand recordsetting 18th test ton, and New Zealand were 117 runs ahead.
“It was good fun,” swing king Trent Boult said last night. “But there’s a lot of cricket still to be played and the challenge is not to get too far ahead of ourselves.”
At this point, to anyone with a fifth day ticket for this test, the news is all bad — then again, so is the weather prognosis.
It was a first session to have eyes being rubbed disbelievingly as England’s batsmen beat a steady retreat to the dressing room.
It was also a day to savour the skills of Boult, who, with Tim Southee an admirable foil, bowled unchanged through the innings — the first New Zealanders to do so — to take his best test figures, six for 32.
Boult’s first five wickets cost just nine runs in 42 deliveries. At one point, wickets fell in five successive overs. He had the ball on a string.
“It was just very enjoyable to get the ball swinging around. Not in our wildest dreams did we think we would get them out in the first session,” he said.
It didn’t swing significantly, he reckoned, but just did enough. That’s all he needed.
Boult relishes test cricket above the other forms. He was well up for a big day out and England had no answer.
They were in danger of falling for less than 26, the 63-year-old record set by New Zealand against the English on the same ground.
The eighth wicket fell at 23 but when Craig Overton, England’s top scorer, steered a ball to the point fence, that ignominy had been seen
off. There were five ducks in the innings, equalling the England record.
As the wickets fell, you kept expecting someone to bring it to a halt, except no one did. Seven fell for 11 in 7.4 overs and no one had the will, or skill, to halt the freefall.
“Someone sneezes and the rest of the guys catch a cold,” disappointed England coach Trevor Bayliss said.
Williamson, Boult and wicketkeeper BJ Watling might have briefly thought back to Cape Town on January 2, 2013, when New Zealand were skittled for 45 on Brendon McCullum’s first day in charge.
Boult has now taken 65 wickets in all internationals this season, starting at Mumbai in early October, in 291⁄ matches at just 21.01.
No need to read the fine print on that, given the differing forms and approaches towards those games.
But it is a reasonable guide to Boult’s summer. He has been uniformly impressive, and occasionally magnificent.
A crowd of 10,540 watched this historic day. Plenty more will wish they’d made the effort. Days like this don’t roll round often.