England vs New Zealand
3rd Test (of 3)
Headingley, Leeds
23rd, 24th, 25th, 26th, 27th June 2022
Result: England (360 & 296-3) beat New Zealand (329 & 326) by 7 wickets
England win the series 3-0
It was only innate English pessimism that put any doubt in the ability of our re-energised Test team to knock off the 113 runs required to win the third Test and seal a 3-0 series whitewash.
Tickets for the final day at Headingley were free, just as they were at Trent Bridge last week, but some stayed away as grey Yorkshire skies on Monday morning brought showers of rain that prevented any play until after lunch. I think allowing free entry on the last day of the matches in this series has been a great idea, and I suspect a deliberate ploy to get the fans back in love with Test cricket, which had been in a desperate state over the last couple of years.
With an entire session lost to the weather, part of me was watching the clock, worrying whether England would have enough time to seal the victory. I was a fool – once they did manage to get on the field, they had it done and dusted in just over an hour.
Before this series, chasing anything more than 250 would have been daunting, but in a very short space of time Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum have the squad believing they can win from any position. At Trent Bridge, they chased 299 in a mere 50 overs and in Leeds they went after the target of 296 at more than five runs an over. This final act was a formality, a New Zealand side run ragged longing for the plane home.
It has been a series full of highs for England, but the brightest lights were Joe Root – officially the player of the series – and Jonny Bairstow, so it seemed fitting that they were together at the crease at the end. Root was 86 not out and would surely have gone on to a third century in the series, while in his current form Bairstow is brilliant fun to watch. Confident and totally at ease with his game, on his home ground he followed up his first innings 162 with a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it 71 from just 44 balls. With ten to win, he cracked a four off the very much part time bowling of Michael Bracewell and I said out loud: “will he try to finish this with a six?”. Next thing I knew, the ball was sailing into the stands. Jonny, you beauty!
Jack Leach was the deserved player of the match for taking 10 wickets across the two innings. In my piece about the Trent Bridge Test, I said the Somerset spinner “just doesn’t seem like he’ll ever worry a batter”. He is a very likeable cricketer and is clearly highly valued by his team mates, so it was nice to see him do so well but I maintain that if England are going to dominate in Tests they will need to find a better spin bowler. Ollie Pope also had a good series, playing at number three for the first time. He rounded off his series with an 82 to go with the hundred he scored in Nottingham. Matty Potts bowled some excellent spells and, in his captain’s words, appears to have taken to international cricket “like a duck to water”, while Jamie Overton did not look out of place on debut, scoring a superb 97 with the bat and sending down some hostile short pitched bowling.
In fact, the only England player to come out of this series badly is Zak Crawley. He made a tortured 25 on Sunday, during which he ran out his opening partner Alex Lees because he was too busy admiring his own shot, played flashy drives at deliveries that weren’t there to be driven and finally slapped a dreadful shot into the hands of Kiwi skipper Kane Williamson. He looks utterly out of his depth, but is in the squad for the India match next week. With a break after that until the South Africa series in the middle of August, it seems he may have a chance to get some runs for Kent, because surely he will need them if he’s going to keep his place.
So, having gone into this series with one win in their last seventeen Test matches, England are celebrating a 3-0 clean sweep of the world champions New Zealand. Next up is India at Edgbaston on Friday, followed by three games against South Africa and then the tour of Pakistan in the autumn. The new regime has breathed new life into the red ball side and the fans will be looking forward to, rather than dreading, each fixture. But what of the visitors? It was a year ago that they were crowned the inaugural winners of the World Test Championship, but since then they have lost key players – wicketkeeper BJ Watling and batter Ross Taylor have both retired – and their usually reliable captain Williamson has been out of form. The only partnership England struggled to break was the one between Daryl Mitchell and Tom Blundell, who between them scored more runs than the rest of the New Zealand team combined. They struggled with injuries, Colin de Grandhomme and Kyle Jamieson both going home early, while Williamson missed the second match with Covid. Their team selections were strange, they didn’t play a proper spinner in two of the three Tests and the one when they did he was only given two overs.
All that aside, however, it needs to be said that it is always a pleasure to play against New Zealand, the true gentlemen of the sport. England have had some terrific tussles with the Black Caps in recent years (this being the obvious one) but they always play the game in the right way and in the right spirit. I look forward to our next meeting.
LEE PAYNE 