A SPINELESS, PITIFUL MESS

England like rabbits in the headlights, says Bayliss

Trevor Bayliss slammed england’s abject auckland surrender as ‘embarrassing’ after their miserable winter hit rock bottom with one of their worst modern batting performances.

England, without an away Test win in 11 matches, crashed to 58 all out which, incredibly, represented a recovery after they had looked certain to record their worst score in their Test history when they collapsed to 27 for nine.

and Bayliss, who is coming under increasing pressure as england Test coach, pinned the blame on his own batsmen rather than put it down to the outstanding bowling of Trent Boult, who took a career best six for 32.

‘We were like rabbits caught in the headlights,’ said Bayliss (right). ‘everyone was making the same kind of mistakes. Their feet were not moving properly and the decision-making was not what it usually is.

‘The ball was swinging a bit but when it’s full it’s as simple as it gets. you have to play forward. a lot of our guys were out today from behind the crease to fairly full balls. When someone sneezed, everyone caught a cold.

‘i can’t explain it. it was a very poor effort and it wasn’t good enough. i thought New Zealand bowled extremely well but we batted equally as badly.’

Bayliss, who has said he will quit as england coach at the end of his contract next year, admitted he was ‘hurt’ and ‘embarrassed’ by what must go down as the worst day under his leadership and promised a full inquest.

‘i’m not the only one in our changing room who will be embarrassed,’ said the australian. ‘We’ll have to sit down and have a good talk about it. is it our mental approach? is it something in our preparation? are we good enough at working out how to play when we do lose wickets?

‘We’ll discuss all this before the next innings and, hopefully, that will be better.’

england fans thought they had seen the worst during a miserable ashes series that ended in a 4-0 thrashing. They were very, very wrong. it turns out england saved one of their worst batting performances in modern memory for the closing stages of their longest winter away since the days they travelled on tour by boat. and this was supposed to be the easier bit. at one stage of this debacle, there was the very real possibility of them registering the lowest Test score by any team in history — the paltry 26 mustered by New Zealand against england here in 1955. it was an abject display that raises huge questions over the direction of the Test team. This is a new low because it is not australia now. it is not Mitchell starc, Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood steaming in and bowling in excess of 90mph to threaten england’s bodies just as much as their stumps.

yes, Boult and Tim southee are excellent bowlers and spearhead a New Zealand team who are a real force at home.

But there is no excuse for the pitiful batting that saw england plummet to 27 for nine on the first day of the first Test before Craig overton put a thin gloss on the shambles with a six and five fours.

Thanks to overton’s unbeaten 33 in a last-wicket stand of 31 with a fuming Jimmy anderson, who could not believe he was batting within the first session, england crawled to the sixth worst total in their 996th Test. This was a proper eden Park mess.

Five players made ducks, including a captain in Joe root who reluctantly moved up to three when it became clear Ben stokes would only be able to play predominantly as a specialist batsman and James vince had to be sacrificed. overton took england beyond their lowest all-time score of 45.

They cannot blame the pink ball or the pitch. Kane Williamson caused eyebrows to be raised when he decided to bowl and root admitted he would have batted had he won the toss. There were no demons in this drop-in surface and, whatever england believe, no lavish movement through the air.

sure, there was swing for Boult in particular but nothing like as much as there was for, say, stuart Broad at Trent Bridge three years ago when australia were steamrollered for 60 and all seemed well with england’s Test world.

Boult bowled exceptionally for his

career-best six for 32 and Southee was not far behind to claim the other four wickets but England were almost entirely to blame for being hustled out in 93 minutes.

They were just naive in the extreme. There was no footwork to try to negate what swing there was, no thinking on their feet and working out what needed to be done. No batsman batted out of his crease except Overton.

Nobody showed any application or proper Test values. One-day attitudes have taken over England’s world to the detriment of the longer game.

The only possible mitigating circumstance is that England’s preparations were inadequate for this two-Test series. What took place in Hamilton last week was not even cricket. It was four days of glorified net practice. How can that possibly prepare players for the intensity of a Test match? It is, of course, all down to the innate greed of a game that crams in as many games as possible and it is no surprise that away teams win series so irregularly in modern Test cricket. It was impossible for England to have any sort of meaningful practice ahead of this series. But it does not legislate for this. As bad as England were, New Zealand were on fire. Everything they touched turned to gold, not least when Williamson pulled off a world-class one-handed diving catch in the gully that matched Stokes’ effort on that fabled day in Nottingham in 2015. Broad had a similar look of shocked awe on his face now as he did then, only this time he was the victim, not the successful bowler.

And once England got on a roll, it was all downhill as wicket after wicket fell.

Broad did become the youngest of the 15 men to reach the exalted landmark of 400 wickets when he claimed Latham but it was hardly cause to celebrate with New Zealand starting to build what should be a match-winning lead. England even wasted their two reviews with shocking referrals.

There was time for what could have been a controversial moment between two of the nicest men in the game in Williamson and Chris Woakes and one of the most personable umpires in Bruce Oxenford. Woakes thought he had deflected a drive from Ross Taylor on to Williamson’s stumps with the New Zealand captain well out of his ground but nobody seemed sure and TV umpire Marais Erasmus decided there was no conclusive evidence of a touch.

Luckily there is a very good spirit between these teams — South Africa v Australia this is not — and any suggestion that the verdict was effectively calling Woakes a cheat was quickly defused by the England man’s tame appeal.

It came as no surprise that Williamson should show England how it should be done. The New Zealand captain simply batted properly against a one-paced attack with style to put England’s inadequacy into its proper context.

Williamson ended an incredible day just nine short of what would be a New Zealand record 18th Test century and is showing Root the real way to bat if he wants to be considered a great batsman. New Zealand, on 175 for three, were almost out of sight at the end of day one. It will take a cricketing miracle to save England from here.