Cricket: an England horror show
“So much for the new era,” said Lawrence Booth in the Daily Mail. In their first Test under Chris Silverwood, the new head coach, England set out to prove that they could build “big first innings” and take 20 wickets in unfriendly conditions overseas. Instead, “all they touched turned to dust”: they lost to New Zealand by an innings and 65 runs. The hosts were as impressive as expected; the English, by contrast, offered “a masterclass in naivety and crassness”. Having reduced New Zealand to 196 for five, they should have been able to build a match-winning lead. Yet somehow they conceded an “eye-watering” 615 runs before New Zealand declared – with BJ Watling scoring 205 – and went on to score just 197 in their second innings. It was a Test that will take its place in “England’s crowded Chamber of Overseas Horrors”.
This was the sixth time in the last four years that England have conceded 600 runs in an innings on their travels, said Scyld Berry in The Daily Telegraph. At the same time, their batsmen are struggling to post substantial totals: “it is two years since they last scored 400 abroad, let alone 600”. What they lacked above all, at Mount Maunganui, was the character to “grind it out until the game gets easier, then to carry on grinding” – the kind of character Watling showed as he chiselled out his double-century. For Silverwood, this was “a sobering start”, said Mike Atherton in The Times. But for Joe Root, the captain, it was more of the same. His two low scores with the bat – a two and an 11 – have only added to the concerns over his captaincy. Before he took over, Root averaged almost 53 runs an innings; since then, that’s fallen below 40, and in his ten Tests this year he is averaging less than 30. In a team short on top-class batsmen, that’s having dire effects. The bowlers, meanwhile, continue to struggle overseas, without the “bowler-friendly conditions that prevail in England”, and are failing to muster the inventiveness and accuracy required. In this Test, it added up to “a shockingly bad display all round”.