BEN STOKES

When you find out about racist comments directed to one of your team-mates it hurts, because they should not have to be dealing with those kind of idiotic words in 2019.

You are left trying to get your head around it – that people have the audacity to do it. There is simply no place for it in cricket, and nor should there be outside of cricket either.

Thankfully, it is an isolated incident out here and it doesn’t reflect New Zealand or the vast majority of people here.

It is a warm and welcoming country, and while it was a horrible thing to have happened to Jofra, the support he has received from so many people here – including the New Zealand players – is a better reflection of what this country is all about.

He has had that same support from his team-mates, as you would expect.We’ve made sure he knows we are here for him because it is not a nice thing for a young lad to have to put up with.

I checked in with him in the morning and he seemed to be dealing with it OK, and we will continue to look out for each other on whatever matter it might be.

England teams have always had diverse squads in terms of where people have come from – different races and religions – and being a part of a team like that you get an understanding of different individuals and you respect that.

It was a sour note following what had been a good game played in the right spirit between the two teams, where New Zealand outplayed us. We are trying to play in a certain way, especially with the bat, although we want guys like Dominic Sibley and Ollie Pope to still play in the manner that has got them picked in the first place.

It is a very fine balance that we are trying to strike, and often a lot of the noise around the team and players is to do with the outcome and not with the process.

There is a view that a bad shot is only a bad shot if you get out to it.

Of course results are important and they let you know where you are as a team, but we are looking for improvements in certain areas that will take time, and with the newer faces it is about proving to yourself that you can do it.

Until you get that first hundred, or until you help the team post that total of 500-plus, you always wonder if you can.

I believe that the players we have are capable of batting for long periods of time and scoring big first-innings runs, but we all need to prove it to ourselves and once we make that breakthrough I think we will start to do it more consistently.

The first time is always the hardest to achieve because of that uncertainty, but when you do it once you know you can do it again. And getting that first big overseas win playing this way will be a huge watershed moment for us. I feel like I can deliver with the bat in the way Rooty and Chris Silverwood want us to.

Once I’m in, I can stay in the present and not get too cocky or ahead of myself. It is important to make your innings count as much as possible, and maybe we can all take a little bit from the way BJ Watling batted and the patience he showed for his whole innings. We are capable of doing that.

With the ball, it was incredibly hard work and you have to give credit to the way Watling and Mitchell Santner played.

At one stage, after some poor

basic fielding from

Jofra, some people might have overheard me on the stump mic having a word, which I do whenever it’s needed, but the next over I dropped the catch to let Watling off and I didn’t dare look at Jof! It was a proper pie-in-theface moment for me. Hopefully there will be no more of those this week as we strike back hard to try to level the series.