ROOT’S STILL SEARCHING FOR ANSWERS
Top-order frailties reappear, and England bowlers can only dream of 20-wicket haul
ENGLAND’S players will miss New Zealand when they fly home in a few days’ time. They will miss the hospitality and the scenery, the food and the wine. Who, frankly, can blame them? The cricket, on the other hand, has proved a bit of an ordeal.
Faced with the task of seeing out the last hour-and-a-half of the second day of the second Test after another gritty innings from BJ Watling, England lost Dom Sibley and Joe Denly inside 10 overs, and were fortunate to reach the close only two wickets down.
Rory Burns was dropped twice, and New Zealand’s bowlers could be forgiven for scenting blood against a team who continue to say all the right things, but seem incapable of putting theory into practice.
The latest plan was simple enough: do as their opponents did at Mount Maunganui, where the New Zealanders replied to England’s 353 with a mammoth 615 for nine, and removed the need for a fourth-innings chase.
Instead, their top order chose the wrong moment to resurrect fears about their suitability for the job. After being pinned on the helmet by Tim Southee, Sibley played all round the kind of fulllength delivery that is supposed to be his bread and butter, and was trapped lbw by the same bowler for four.
Each of Sibley’s three Test innings so far has thrown up a fresh concern. In his first, he fell trying to force a crooked off-side drive. In his second, he was all at sea against Mitchell Santner’s leftarm spin. Now, his supposed leg-side strength became, momentarily, a weakness. He could do with a score in the second innings.
Denly has had a decent run, and it needed a decent ball from his Kent colleague Matt Henry to end it — a smidgen of seam movement enough to catch the edge as Denly, on four, defended outside off stump.
That left England 24 for two, and it could have been worse. Burns was put down at slip by Ross Taylor on 10 after a loose drive at Henry, then again at midwicket by Jeet Raval on 19 after an equally loose clip off Southee. With England aiming to square the series, none of it inspired confidence.
Earlier, New Zealand’s first-innings 375 had felt like a letdown after Watling threatened to reprise his Mount Maunganui heroics and bat England out of the game.
While he and Daryl Mitchell were adding 124 for the sixth wicket in 53 overs, the bowling looked as deflated and insipid as it has ever done under Joe Root. And that is saying something.
There was no energy in the field, no edge, no sense of menace. England looked like what they were: a team still reeling from the 201 overs they had spent being ground into the Bay Oval dirt by Watling and Santner.
All tour, Root has spoken of finding a way of taking 20 wickets with the Kookaburra in foreign climes, but if that was the question, none of his bowlers appeared to have the answer. It was dispiriting stuff, the more so because Jofra Archer was yet to provide the cutting edge that had allowed his captain to begin this series with such high hopes.
Even Ben Stokes, shrugging off the pain in his left knee that had limited him to two overs in the first day and raised fresh questions about his longterm fitness, lacked his usual snarl.
But with two balls to go before tea, Stuart Broad gave England a lifeline. He had begun the day by knocking back the centurion Tom Latham’s off stump, but now decided to go short. Delivering the ball more than a foot behind the crease, he found extra bounce to surprise Watling, who could only glove it to Burns in the gully.
Out for 55, Watling had taken his time at the crease in two innings this series to 931 minutes — only 16 fewer than 11 England players managed across two innings in the first Test. If they want a lesson in unobtrusive crease occupation, Watling has provided it.
Yet his dismissal provided a template: England spent the 12 overs after tea bowling short, and reaped the rewards. Broad picked up his fourth wicket when Mitchell, on 73, miscued a pull to fine leg, where Archer clung on.
Southee gloved a lifter from the persevering Chris Woakes, before Archer finally joined the fun when Santner pulled him to deep midwicket. Moments earlier, Santner had flicked Archer for two sixes in three balls, the second landing flush on the head of a steward before ricocheting towards a spectator and knocking off her sunglasses.
When Henry chipped the next ball, a full toss from Sam Curran, to midwicket, New Zealand had lost their last five for 60. But, for England, the experience had been all too typical: the total of 375 matched exactly the average first- innings score they have conceded abroad under Root.
It is the kind of stat that can become a millstone. And if it settles around England’s neck, the talk of regaining the Ashes in two years’ time will begin to sound even more hollow than it already does.