by And do the match takes another turn. Last night, England were in a
very strong position, but tonight the advantage and momentum are with
New Zealand.
The experienced old hands who had been the batting engine of the
Caribbean series all made a mess of things. Butcher erroneously
thought he hadn't bottom-eged a cut of Vettori to McCullum, Thorpe
played on to Cairns almost as convincingly as Vettori the previous
day, and although Hussain played a few good shots, the critical
observer would not be entirely convinced by his performance,
especially with Strauss's assured innings fresh in the memory.
In the evening, Hoggard was especially criminal in ignoring the
lessons he should have taken home from Barbados, but the rest of the
bowling was a return to the crassness of most of England's recent
efforts against Australia. Somehow, England's bowlers got fixated on
the idea that because McCullum had got himself out to a short ball in
the first innings, he is desperately weak against short-pitched
bowling. It was never much of a theory against Steve Waugh, and it is
not much better against McCullum, and Hoggard really ought to know
better than to try and bowl bouncers (one bouncer in five overs might
be sensible for the surprise value), but two or three short ones an
over at his pace is simply asking for trouble - and both McCullum and
Richardson were happy to give him what he'd asked for. (Giles need not
return in this series: the Kiwis have clearly decided that he's utter
rubbish and will treat him as such, and since they're not far wrong,
bringing him on to bowl is just a disaster waiting to happen.)
But there were quite a few people who did good things today.
I expect that the stand between McCullum and Richardson was the best
batting of the day, but I can't be sure since I was getting so
irritated by the English bowlers' inability to remember what length to
bowl. McCullum played adventurously, being particularly severe on
anything short, and managed to affect Richardson to such an extent
thatr he opened up and looked like a normal Test batsman rather than
the Tavare de nos jours he'd been on Thursday. McCullum had come in at
3 because Astle has been off with some flu-like thing for two days,
after a superb catch by Hussain to dismiss Fleming.
That had left New Zealand on 7/1 after they'd conceded a deficit of 55
on first innings, at which point England were clearly still ahead, but
they threw away the advanatage and then some.
Hoggard had done a manful job of*** around and playing even a few
shots for over an hour before he went for 15. The new ball was 8 overs
old by this time, so he'd done his job as nigh***chman almost to
perfection. Alf Gover had a tale of how he'd once gone in as
nigh***chman for Surrey, and thought he'd been doing pretty well
batting with Jack Hobbs for an hour the next morning when Hobbs met
him in the middle. "Well done," said Hobbs, "but would you mind
getting yourself out now: there are some good batsmen waiting to come
in." There were on this occasion, too, but Thorpe failed to live up to
the billing.
Flintoff and Jones the Mitt did, though, and after negotiating 20
minutes to get to the interval without incident, proceeded to put on
more than 80 in an hour after lunch. The little boy sitting in front
of me asked his father "Is this 20-20?" Dad said it wasn't, and he was
more than semantically correct. Flintoff and Jones were playing very
aggressively, but they weren't attempting to score at a 20-20 sort of
strike rate of 180, just at odo pace of 90. Freddy moved up from the
career total of sixes shared by Trescothick, Gavaskar, Sehwag and
Hammond to join Chris Cairns's dad, Border and Keith Miller on 28.
Flintoff's Antigua century had been an extremely responsible affair,
and I thought this innings too was well judged and executed. The
Flintoff/Jones stand had rapidly given England a small first-innings
lead, and if NZ hadn't been able to break it, the game could have been
almost in the bag for England by teatime. Having taken the lead, they
were quite right to attempt to administer a hammer blow, because the
profits could have been huge and the downside was merely that England
would only get a small advantage. The point I'm making about Flintoff
is that he seems to have acquired the sense to know what approach *he*
ought to be taking at *this* stage of the match and play accordingly -
and that's the only necessary desciption - people know what a Flintoff
innings is like by now, admirably illustrated by the fact that all the
stands were packed immediately after lunch when there are usually
acres of empty seats on the Saturday as people dawdle over their
picnic lunches.
It was Jones who fell to the sucker punch, slightly mistiming a cut
off the newly-introduced and slightly slower Styris to Oram in the
gully. Having watched this 46, I can see why Fletcher and Vaughan were
so keen to bring him into the side. His keeping this evening was a
considerable improvement on his Thursday performance, so it may be
that day one's lapses can be written off as nerves at making a home
debut at HQ. Today, he was up to Stewart's standard. With bat as well
as ball.
There were a couple of shots square through the off side and a couple
of sweeps off Vettori which particularly caught my eye. They were hit
very hard indeed, achieved not through the bludgeoning power that
Flintoff has, nor from exquisite timing, but through extreme bat
speed: to describe him as wristy would give the wrong impression, but
he must have wrists made of steel wire to deliver that kind of whip to
the ball. He looks like a class act.
Oram and Flintoff took the respective new balls, in Flintoff's case
presumably because Hoggard preferred to waste his opportunity at the
Nursery End after Harmison had used it, and in Oram's case because he
had obviously been a much better bowler than Martin yesterday. All the
New Zealand bowlers were sharper and better directed than on day two,
but Oram was again the pick of them to my eyes. Intelligent line and
length at 78-80 mph just kept giving trouble.
New Zealand have their noses in front, but they will probably need to
bat all day tomorrow and get England out in three sessions if they are
to win, and neither of those two are foregone conclusions.
What an excellent match this is turning out to be.
Even if it's been ***y freezing the last two days.
Cheers,
Mie