REALITY CHECK FOR ROOT
Tensions rising as skipper fails to get best out of Archer
IF Joe Root was unsure about the size of his task as he tries to build a crack squadron of Ashes winners, he was given a sobering insight by an unsung New Zealander.
England had begun the third morning of the first Test harbouring hopes of a decisive first-innings lead. By stumps, those ambitions had evaporated into the Bay of Plenty, with New Zealand wicketkeeper BJ Watling batting — and battling — all day for a superb hundred.
He defended the good balls and hit the bad ones, a method so stunningly simple that Root may wonder how and why his own side squandered the riches of 277 for four on the second day.
The egoless Watling showed them t he way. He doesn’t hog t he headlines, and has never played at the IPL, but he now has eight Test hundreds — seven more than Jos Buttler — and an average nudging 40. This was crease occupation par excellence.
Yet scoring big first-innings totals is only half the blueprint England’s captain intends to use for his assault on Australia in two winters’ time. The other half — taking 20 wickets in overseas conditions — may prove tough er still. For English bowlers, the Kookaburra ball is fast becoming as unmentionable as Macbeth is to actors. And on a hot, frustrating day those 20 wickets felt like a mirage — in 90 overs, England managed just two.
Had Ben Stokes held a regulation catch when Watling edged Root low to his right at slip on 27 things might have been different.
But the best teams keep creating chances and England did not.
At stumps, New Zealand had turned their overnight 144 for four into 394 for six, a useful lead of 41.
For England, the optimism engendered by Sam Curran’s dismissal of Kane Williamson on the second evening gave way to the kind of fatalism that has derailed so many of their overseas ventures. There were at least some straws to clutch at.
Root trapped Henry Nicholls for 41 during a probing spell of off-spin before lunch, and Dom Sibley pulled off a blinding catch in the gully from Stokes’s first ball after tea to send back Colin de Grandhomme for 65.
Jack Leach’s left-arm spin was tidy but unthreatening on a pitch that refused to do his bidding, while the thrifty Stuart Broad made intelligent use of his leg-cutter.
Stokes bowled a ferocious late spell to Mitchell Santner, and ought to have had him caught by Ollie Pope at short leg.
But at the heart of Root’s dilemma was a question that you suspect will recur time and again in the months ahead — how to get the best out of Jofra Archer?
Archer admitted before this game that he was not thrilled about the prospect of bowling with t he Kookaburra—a confession interpreted by some in the England camp as an attempt to manage expectations. But then we cannot hope f or his near- miraculous summer to be replicated at the click of a finger.
But it was mildly alarming that by the time he was recalled in the final hour for a crack at Santner he had bowled only 10 overs of the 75 sent down in the day.
It was equally alarming that Archer did not breach 90mph until the end of his seventh spell of the innings. If Root is going to bowl him in short bursts, presumably he wants him to go flat out. Some of the body language between captain and bowler was tepid, if not tense.
Not all Root’s decisions bore scrutiny. After Archer had pinned Nicholls on the helmet on the second evening, there was a case for unleashing him first thing. Root opened with Curran and Broad.
And they were his go-to men once more when Root took the second new ball immediately after lunch, delaying Archer’s entry for 37 minutes. When Stokes, who curiously sent down only four overs before tea, had Santner hopping around, the situation cried out for Archer at the other end.
Root and Archer are still feeling each other out, of course, but this was a day when English hopes that he would instantly solve their overseas conundrum proved wide of the mark.
Neither did a pair of misfields go down well with team-mates. After the first, Archer earned an audible rebuke from Stokes. Following a summer in which his super over helped England win their first World Cup and his duels with Steve Smith lit up the Ashes, Archer bears an almost impossible burden each time he runs in.
It is easy to forget he is only 24 and playing just his 34th first-class game.
Root’s challenge, then, will be to find a middle ground that suits everyone. Archer is flesh and blood, not a machine, and he will not always be able to send the speedgun into meltdown.
Equally, the captain can quietly point to his bowling figures at the third-day close — none for 84 — and ask for better.
The upshot of it all was that, 24 hours after taking control of this Test match, England were facing a first-innings deficit.
Forget the Ashes: the immediate challenge was to avoid going to Hamilton next week 1-0 down.