Stoneman and Vince find form to put England on top
Pair build sizeable lead after Cook fails again Fuller length pays off for Broad and Anderson
Cricket is not pretentious or anything but it does love to classify certain activities, like legspin or batting, as “art” when laymen would label them as crafts. By the same token, writing down a list of eleven names is known as the “art of selection.”
In New Zealand the selection of their Test team does not involve much art or craft: one long-term player-turned-commentator said during this second Test that only once in all his experience has the captain not been given the team he wanted. In England the process is complicated by having many more professional cricketers and candidates, but it is also simplified by the objective of the whole exercise: to find the right team for the traditional be-all and end-all, the next Ashes series.
England’s only Test batting places not up for debate in 2019 are those of Joe Root, Ben Stokes and Jonny Bairstow. None out of Alastair Cook, Mark Stoneman, James Vince and Dawid Malan can be considered a certain starter in 15 months’ time, although Malan looked the part when extending England’s lead with Joe Root on the fourth morning towards a declaration.
England’s second innings in the second Test was the ideal moment to nail down a batting place, if not quite for the Ashes of 2019 then at least against Pakistan and India this summer. Run-making abroad does not come any less difficult - now that Bangladesh serve up spinners’ paradises - than it did on an easypaced pitch at Hagley Park after England had acquired a first innings lead of 29, and after Trent Boult, Tim Southee and the new ball had all lost their initial bite.
England’s interminable tour was launched five months ago by a fine partnership between Stoneman and Vince when they crashed Western Australia’s junior bowlers around the Waca in a stand of 153 after Cook had hung his bat out to the second ball of the tour. The Ashes also began with a stand of 125 between Stoneman and Vince after Cook had hung his bat out, and in the last innings of this tour the same pair added 123 for the second wicket after Cook had - you guessed.
In the meantime, since the start of November, Stoneman and Vince have not advanced quite as far as the new panel of England’s selectors, whenever they are named, would have liked. Stoneman has made numerous fine starts but has looked less assured and become less fluent the longer his innings have gone and the more the initial pace has gone off the ball. His highest Test score, in 18 attempts, is the 60 here - after he had been dropped when 48 and 57. The higher his Test score, it seems, the more liable he is to vertigo, such perhaps is his desire to make it at Test level.
Vince, by contrast, looked assured from the moment he walked out. He always does. Never was he beaten for pace in the Ashes, even though it was Mitchell Starc’s or Pat Cummins’. And his shot-selection outside offstump has improved this winter, if from a relatively low base. When he took the bait offered by Boult, with a 7-2 offside field, Vince was doing his job of getting a move on, rather than playing selfishly for his maiden Test century, because England had to budget on needing at least four sessions to bowl New Zealand out a second time. Cook might seem to be the most vulnerable of England’s batsmen, after scoring 23 runs in Auckland and Christchurch, but a two-test series makes too small a sample for any judgment to be passed on his future. He had no competitive match after a two-month wait at home. Once he was out - caught down the legside - to a halfvolley a foot outside legstump which he did well to reach. In this innings his feet were working well and he was beginning to move into the ball as he had in the Melbourne Test, when he nibbled and was gone.
The four main candidates outside the current Test team are Haseeb Hameed, who has begun making runs again after his brilliant start in India last winter was terminated by a broken finger; Keaton Jennings, who is being groomed as the captain of England Lions as well as a top-three batsman; Liam Livingstone, who merited a place in this Test as a forthright batsman and occasional offspinner; and Joe Clarke, who has opened for England Lions in whiteball cricket and has to
Vince has improved his shot-selection outside off stump this winter, if from a relatively low base
be urged by England’s management to bat at three, if not higher, for Worcestershire. Essex’s Dan Lawrence could overtake them if he bends his front knee into his shots.
In their favour Stoneman and Vince saw off Boult and Southee very capably, only to fall upon their return. In the process they proved that it is not simply a new-ball pitch but a game in which the third seamers of both sides, Neil Wagner and Mark Wood, have both pitched far too short, whereas James Anderson and Stuart Broad, Boult and Southee, have all taken wickets at any stage because they have pitched a full length, wobbled the ball around and drawn batsmen into the drive.
Anderson, bowling a fuller length than at any time since the Cardiff Test of 2015, bowled B-J Watling with the most perfect of outswingers. Anderson’s length was so full that he actually managed to bowl one low full toss with the second new ball.
Broad finished with his first fivewicket haul since the Johannesburg Test more than two years ago. The weary old warhorse of the last Ashes was replaced by the highkicking colt who ran in with rhythm and followed through with zeal.
It made a gladsome sight for England supporters to see their team singing from the same song-sheet, led by the new choirmaster Root at mid-off, talking to his bowlers and encouraging them to bowl a full length, instead of standing at second slip helplessly and watching them bowl defensively.