England vs New Zealand: Wickets tumble on day one at Lord's!

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.

0:16Michael Atherton:604 and final Test wicket that's new at all. It's ended when the T20 World Cup. England's captain Ben Stokes, while he is there, England have hope.

0:33Hello and welcome to the Daily Review. Day one of the Lords test, the first test of the summer here in England. It's England versus New Zealand. And a little bit of a celebration as well. 150 test matches here at Lords as well. So quite the historic moment. Michael Atherton, Simon Doyle, two hours lost to rain today. And yet we have still lost 16 wickets on day one. How do you describe it? Well, first of all, in the 150 tests, I mean, Lord's seen many remarkable moments, but I think that triple wicket maiden for Ollie Robinson on his comeback is going to be remembered in years to come as one of them.

1:14And the explanation for that is part of the explanation for the 16 wickets falling. The conditions have been absolutely perfect for a bowler of his type. And there have been some very good bowlers on show today. Ollie Robinson with a new ball for England. I thought Will O 'Rourke especially, although Kyle Jamieson took five wickets for New Zealand, I thought Will O 'Rourke especially took the eye. I know Matt Henry had back spasms, but you look at that four-pronged New Zealand attack, it's a very strong attack, and the conditions have been really challenging for batting. The clouds have been low all day, the floodlights have been on for the most part, it's been a bit stop-start for the batters.

1:52I mean, the ball has moved extravagantly at times, really nipped off the seam. and it's been a little bit up and down as well. So it's not been straightforward batting and the bowlers, you know, have taken their opportunity today. Let's go back to the start of the day. Coin toss goes up, falls in favour of Tom Latham. He would have been absolutely over the moon having a chance to bowl first here and probably no surprises with the New Zealand 11. Santner was sort of maybe, but his shoulder certainly was only four weeks out of rehab. But an impressive seam attack that got to work pretty quickly.

2:25Michael Atherton:Yeah, it did. And as Ath mentioned, I think the loss of Henry was a key one, but also the drops of Harry Brook, eight. And again, he was dropped on 45. So you take that catch on eight. I know it was a tough one. The second one, I think, was a pretty easy catch to Ruch and Ravindra. But Conway will be feeling that a little bit. They could have had England all out for around 80, 85, which in the context of where we sit now might have been a little better. But a really good bowling performance, I think, from the three in particular when they lost Matt Henry. A lot of time, and as many will over the next few years, for Willow Rourke, he's an awkward customer.

3:05Michael Atherton:90 mile an hour consistently. Well, Hadath is going, can we get him a passport? He was born in Sturgeon. He was born in Sturgeon. He's got a passport, hasn't he? We'd seen him. England had seen plenty of him in that series, November late 2025. and he gave one or two of them a hurry up in that series as well. And he is lively, isn't he? He was above 90 miles an hour for the most part today. He's kind of awkward with his height. I think we're just going to go off a bad light, actually, at 61 for 6, so 16 wickets for the day. And England in charge, really, in the ascendancy, when for most of the day, three-quarters of the day, they were really up against it.

3:47And I'm sure one or two were ready to sharpen the knives a little bit.

3:51Michael Atherton:Well, Butch and I talked about it on commentary. And I said, I said, I bet they're sharpening them knives downstairs. But I said, just wait. You've got to wait until both sides are batted here because these conditions are very favourable. And they have been favourable. England have done a brilliant job. And, Mel, you and I were talking about it on commentary as well. It's an easy thing to come out from a bowling point of view and go searching when you have what you perceive and what many might have perceived a low total on the board. But they didn't go searching. In the graphic we showed, 69 % or 70 % on a good length.

4:22Michael Atherton:So that is Ollie Robinson's sort of mantra, isn't it? That's what he does and what he's done so well and what's gained him reselection, I guess. And they followed up what New Zealand did very well. I thought they had a good hard length and they didn't go searching and they've picked up the rewards for that. Not a great day to make your debut as a player. No. But at least you're in good company when others are falling around you. If the team gets 500 and you get up for eight, you're probably thinking that's not so good. We all can think back to our opening moments, our first day in Test cricket.

4:57My first day came against Australia many, many moons ago, but at the end of that first day, Australia were 301 for none. Not a wicket fell in the entire day, which I suppose... Did you get a ball? The next day I did. It was that desperate. Get it on! So that was almost the extreme opposite end of the scale to this. But for Emilio Gay, it's one of the great days when you make your debut, obviously, as you know. But he will have easier days to bat on. And he got a good one today, I thought. He certainly did. He was a lifeguard in the field, though, certainly. Make sure that he was in amongst the action there, too.

5:30The word has been used ad nauseum almost, that of reset. And we were wondering, how does England reset after the Ashes? A lot of the wickets were just good bowling. It wasn't as if they did anything that would have people saying, oh, it's the same old England again. Well, you know, we've talked ad nauseum about it. I think England have done a lot of good things over the four-year period, but they know that they messed up in the winter. But it's not a case of throwing everything out. I don't think you want to see a timid England team or a team that goes into its shell. And in fact, Harry Brook today showed the advantage of being on the proactive side, albeit sensibly, you know, not recklessly.

6:11but it was not a day just to sit there and try and defend. That's what the bowlers want you to do, really. And Harry Brook at least tried to take the attack to New Zealand. He made 56, which in any normal Test match day is not an eye-catching score, but on a day like today when 16 wickets have fallen and on such a low-scoring day, actually might be the difference between getting yourself into a winning position or not. So I don't think you can draw too many conclusions from today. It was essentially a bowler's day, a very difficult day for batting. I don't think any batsman there, no matter how good, and, you know, Cain Williamson, one of the great players of the day, lasted two balls today.

6:51I don't think anybody would have found it easy against these bowlers in these conditions.

6:55Michael Atherton:You can't underestimate that little 22 at the back end as well. And, you know, sometimes you look at it and you think, OK, number 10 and 11 have come together. I thought they both actually played quite nicely. They played some nice shots. and it might not seem like a massive thing, but 22 at the back end for the last wicket, puts that score up in that 140 range and you're just thinking how important might that be in the grand scheme of things over time. They didn't give it away and just hung in there for a bit. I thought that, I don't say it's crucial, but it's little moments like that in the game where we're asking England to be better at assessing the situation of the game.

7:34Michael Atherton:I thought those two did it quite nicely at the back end. Talk to us about the pitch. There's been a lot of chat about this pitch over the wintertime being relayed, the out surface as well. We mentioned the World Test Championship final where the ball was dying a little bit. Just to try and make it a little bit more lively and a bit more pace and bounce. How did you assess things today? I think there's two things. One are the conditions and then one is the surface and the pitch itself. The conditions made it challenging. You know, we've said low cloud cover, lights on, perfect overhead. conditions really.

8:07The pitch itself I thought was a little bit up and down. The very first ball of the game kind of died through to the keeper. There were a lot of balls where Ben Duckett at the start, you know, the ball was rattling the bottom of his bat and you could see him shaking his fingers because he was getting the vibrations from the bottom. So it was a little, that exacerbated the overhead conditions, the fact that perhaps it was a little bit too paced and a little bit up and down. And when you put those, I'm not significantly up and down, but just a little bit. And when you put those two things together, then that made it very hard work.

8:42Carl Jamison, been out for a bit, hasn't he? Injured. It took him a while to get into his groove, but once he did, he's one of the reasons why he's so pivotal to this bowling line.

8:52Michael Atherton:Yeah, the first over was a bit ropey, wasn't it? I think when you look at the friendly full toss, just get off the mark. Here's a nice little full toss for you just to get your innings underway and your debut underway. I thought post that again that awkward bounce that when he first came on the scene from a New Zealand point of view he's always had that awkward bounce and when he had those injuries in the back injury in particular when he first came back the pace was slightly down in the in the late 120s and he's now back up into the mid 130s to late 130s at six foot seven six foot eight that becomes quite unnerving it becomes quite difficult from a batting point of view and he's swinging the ball almost more so away from the left and into the right than he is when he first started.

9:38Michael Atherton:He was a big away swinger to the right-handers. So there's a couple of things have changed, and that injury has brought about that sort of lack of side-on rotation, so he gets a bit more of the in-swing to the righties now. But, yeah, really good. New Zealand need that point of difference. I talked about the Bolt-Southie-Wagner trio that we had last time we were here. this is vastly different. I thought it might be better in the conditions in England at the moment because you've got two very tall into the wicket type of bowlers that might be able to cause a few more issues and if it gets flat they will have a part to play as well if it gets flatter.

10:15Michael Atherton:So on the pitch I kind of, it surprised me a little bit because you know we've been here we had 10 days of absolutely cracking weather. So how you know from a ground stuff point of view You're trying to get the surface ready four or five days before the test match starts so that you can just do your final little bits of prep. So how it wasn't rock hard after that 10 days of 27, 28, 29. They just can't do it, can they? We see it. Way back in the day when I played here, you'd get cracks on the third, fourth, fifth days. But you rarely see those cracks open up now because the surface is just not as hard as it was.

10:57and around the county scene at the start of the summer, there's been runs galore around the country. Not so much here. Emilio Gay played in quite a high-scoring game and got 100 here for Durham against Middlesex, but otherwise the score's not perhaps as we've seen elsewhere. So there's always something in it for the bowlers here with the slope and then when you add these kind of atmospherics as well. Can you put your finger on why, though? I mean, we've sort of discussed about the make-up of the pitch and the soil content and the like, there was a comment in the commentary box, I can't remember who it was, was saying back in the day you would roll and roll and roll.

11:32Is it less rolling going on? Well, I'm not an expert and I don't profess to be. Just say it confidently, people will leave you. I don't know is the answer, but all we do know is that on the evidence of today, it was quite challenging and I don't mind that actually. You know, it was interesting cricket. I'd much prefer to see a day when the bowlers are on top than when it's just a complete run fest and it was really challenging for the batters. And I think it may well be different tomorrow if the sun shines and New Zealand were 12 for four in that game last time and hauled themselves into a challenging situation.

12:06So I wouldn't write off New Zealand. They're a very resilient side, but England end it in the ascendancy. Yeah, well, they've finished the day at New Zealand 61 for six. They still trail by 79. The only test win they've had here was you were touring here back in 1999. Can they still get themselves into a position for their second?

12:25Michael Atherton:If they are within 30. Yep. So that gives New Zealand 110. If they can find their way to 110, 115, I think they're in the game. The conditions are as such that I think it will do this, even if the sun is shining tomorrow. I think it will still nip about for long enough if you put the ball in the right areas. As we keep saying, execute your plans. All of those clichés. but there's enough there. And you know what, they might have to chase 220, 230, 240. Well, it makes for a very good game, I think, if that can happen. OK, well, over to Nathan Smith and Glenn Phillips, who are still in and over. Well, it's Ollie Robinson, who could pick up a Pfeiffer tomorrow on his comeback for the seventh time, I think, in 21 days.

13:09Thanks for joining us. We'll catch you tomorrow.