England vs New Zealand: England wrap up thumping victory as pitch makes headlines in Lord's Test

0:01Yeah, gone. Gone, he gets his fairytale ending. An epic way to go to a Test Match 100. The London Spirit of First Time win is the most remarkable thing you'll probably ever see in cricket. 604 and final Test wicket for Stuart Ford. It's ended when the T20 World Cup. England's captain Ben Stokes, while he is there, England have hope.

0:32Well, the winter of discontent has been replaced by a big win by England by 143 runs here at Lourdes. It's the Daily Review and we only need Butch today. Game over. Crowd reasonably happy. They would have liked to have seen a little bit more action. But how do you surmise that last day's play? Well, I mean, let's start with today. England wrapped it up. I think everybody expected they probably would. New Zealand only had five wickets left. needing 199, which is a heck of a lot of runs, given what we've seen the ball do on this surface and the quality of the bowlers. I was a little bit surprised that they didn't try to throw a counter punch a bit earlier, maybe send Jameson up the order to come in once Blundell was knocked over, and just try to put England on the back foot, try anything.

1:20Because the one thing you knew for certain was that there were going to be lots and lots of deliveries that would get a batter out playing normally. But they didn't do that. they went pretty much through the card as you'd expect and as we all expected England ended up winning the game quite comfortably so that I guess from a if you're looking at it from a neutral point of view and you wanted the game to get close and for there to be a bit of jeopardy in there that might have been the only way for that to happen yeah it didn't and England have won does that does that mean that it doesn't help New Zealand in sense of getting ready for the next test at the oval if they'd gone out there and been a little bit more proactive maybe potentially got a little bit closer.

1:59Does it sort of put England on the back foot a little bit more as now they just sort of wow we've won that reasonably comfortably? I mean I don't know I think New Zealand will look back on that over the course of the test match and feel that they had their they had their chances and just let them slip through their fingers quite literally and they've dropped the five catches. You've got to say fielding probably was... Yes and that's not something that you would you would associate with New Zealand at all you know they're incredibly professional generally speaking they if you give them a chance they take it and in the end the runs that were made outside of those missed opportunities that you take those away and the game is very close yeah we're having a different conversation so I think that that potentially more than anything else that and the injury to Matt Henry because you know he was operating at half wrap power for most of the game when he did bow sort of put them on the back foot but from England's point of view what are What are the positives from it?

2:53Well, obviously, Robinson back and taking wickets. You'd have put your house on him taking Pfeiffer in the conditions as they were in that first innings and not perhaps getting him three wickets in and over, but you'd expect him to bowl well. He did. He's obviously been welcomed back into the fold and, you know, Stokes is happy to have him around. And England need him. You know, how many years after Jimmy Anderson was retired, Chris Wokes was the new ball man, wasn't it? Yep. and they've had a combination of various people, Gus Atkinson mostly, but various others sharing the new ball with him.

3:27They needed a new ball specialist back in the team. And in Robinson, look no further. He's probably the best that we have in the country. So that's excellent for him and excellent for England. What else? Melio Gay. Yep. Look, it took an enormous amount of gumption to go out there in your very first Test match, having scored mountains of runs for Durham and feeling a great nick to come up on a surface whereby you could literally get one, roll along the deck and knock you over. To go out there and play with this sort of, that sort of stickability, that attitude that it was going to be over his dead body that he was going to get out.

4:07And that 57 that he made in the second innings was absolutely superb. And so that'll give him an enormous amount of confidence wearing the shirt and also sort of play into the idea that England could and should play cricket in a more situational way. He showed the way and he's brand new to the team. With a smile on his face, and I'm not saying you have to play sport with a smile on your face, but you could almost sense that there was a, and there should be two in your first ever Test match and you're at Lord's, just a joy of being out there in the middle. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think it's...

4:40It's contagious sometimes, isn't it? It certainly can be. The grumpy old, grouchy old man in the corner suddenly rubs off on him. And you remember what it's like to be back there. Correct, yeah. And look, he's by all accounts a very confident lad. He's got a bit of a swagger about him. But he didn't go out there and play like he was a millionaire coming to, I'm going to show everybody the shots that I can play. He went out and did what the team needed him to do. It was fantastic. It was a bowlers and statisticians delight, this test match, wasn't it? So 22 wickets falling to bowls. It was 24 in the end.

5:1324 in the end, yes. A record in itself. Record in England in test matches. Yeah, yes, absolutely. And the shortest Lord's test match since 1888 in terms of Obisbold. And that's all the games that were uncovered wickets and the like, which says a lot, doesn't it? Yeah, and we sit here at lunch on day four. How we got to lunch on day four? Well, we know how. We got to lunch on day four, rain. But, yeah, I mean, it's not good enough. The team here at Lourdes, from the chief exec right down to, you know, the guys letting you into the pavilion or not, depending on your attire, they all know and they're trying their damnedest to do something about it.

5:57But that doesn't change the fact that this was not a good test match surface. And Simon Doole alluded to it but didn't allude to the fact that there might be something coming out the next day or so about a potential shift, maybe a drop-in wicket? Yeah, they've been growing those for years, you know, down at the nursery end. And they haven't felt the need to employ them as yet. I mean, it's a big call, isn't it? You think about this ground in particular. Because of the feel, it doesn't feel right. Yes, you've reached a point where it's either dig the whole lot up and no cricket here for three years, which is never going to happen, or other drastic measures need to be taken.

6:38They had the steamer on it. They've tried everything they possibly could. They can't have another test like this, though, can they? No. I mean, we've got two more this year. Obviously, you've got the women's England-India test match in July, and then Pakistan will be here in sort of late August. And, yeah, and people will... The last thing aground like this once is bad publicity for any reason whatsoever. And, you know, the pitches here have been less than ideal for quite some number of years now. OK, let's play it forward now. We've got the Oval coming up. You know that ground superbly well, inside and out, starting on the 17th.

7:15Let's start with New Zealand. We've spoken about Matt Henry having some back issues, got a little bit of time to potentially recover if he doesn't. There's a couple sort of waiting in the wings. Yeah, Blair Tickner and Zach Foulkes on there. Foulkes, you would say, is probably more a light-for-light replacement. New ball specialist, yeah. New ball expertise, so that would probably be the way they go there. You know, they can expect a more batter-friendly surface, given what we've seen in the county championship this year, where wickets have been harder to come by than crossings on Waterloo Bridge today.

7:49Yes. And so, you know, for that matter, the batters will have something that they feel they can get their teeth into. And they can show that they're very, very good players. You know, guys averaging 40 and above in the top order. Ratchin Ravindra will have nightmares probably about his appearance at Lordseer. But he's a terrific player. So I don't imagine they've changed things too much unless Henry is ruled out. And Mitch Santner could come back into the side. That's the other thing, as to whether or not they feel a specialist spinner might be needed at the Oval. For England? I don't see any changes made, really.

8:29People will probably point to show Bashir's inclusion in the XI and say, why was he playing? Why didn't they either pick another seam bowler or play Rayan Ahmed? My answer to that would be nobody knew the pitch was going to play as badly as it did. And if you do, say for example, you turn up at the Oval and it looks like, crikey, it's going to be another two and a half day test. Then the question you would ask is, is Rayan Ahmed a better bet instead of show Bashir, given that he is more of a batter, lengthens the batting line up that little bit more and will only be called upon to maybe get rid of a tail ender or two.

9:08But all things being equal at the Oval, I suspect England will be unchanged. Well, have England quietened the naysayers, do you think? I think it's impossible. Listen, if you're looking for anything negative to say about the team, then you can always find it. But in those circumstances, on that pitch, the best thing that they did, nearly all of the wickets taken in this Test match, 95 % of them were taken with batters being got out. And that's on both sides. What England didn't do was come out there and have a slog and get knocked over for 130 and then blame the pitch. They dug in, they got as many as they possibly could in very trying circumstances and won the game.

9:49I don't think there's anything to complain about there. Well, we're glass half full kind of people. Well, I mean, you're more than me. I'd say you're probably 60-40. I'm more towards the half. OK. Well, either way with the ratios. And it's only been the fourth day. We've lost a whole day to rain. It has been thoroughly entertaining and I hazard a guess that both these teams will be entertaining at the Oval next week as well. That's the end for the Daily Review. We'll catch you over the river next week.