Steve Finn-ishes the job

England 167 & 421-6. New Zealand 460-9. Match Drawn.

Apologies for the awful headline. Watching a tailender block for almost five hours can do strange things to the brain.

In the end the pitch won. It’s no coincidence that England’s hero with the bat yesterday, nighwatchman Steve Finn, managed to compile his first ever first class fifty. The word ‘featherbed’ doesn’t quite cut it. A combination of Warne, Ambrose, Marshall, Hadlee (even the mighty Jack Shantry) would’ve struggled to take twenty wickets on that. New Zealand’s seamers stood no chance.

But never mind. We can take heart from the fact that we dug ourselves a chasm on day two, but managed to salvage a draw. In a funny way, England will have the momentum going into the second test. What were the odds on that on Friday?

The broadsheets will no doubt provide precise reports on Sunday’s events, so we’re not going to bother. The day can be summed up in one statistic: England scored 187 runs in the entire day. It wasn’t exactly riveting stuff. Neither did it look like we’d lose at any point. Pitches like this one, which just got flatter, are no good for cricket.

So what have we learned over the last few days? A.  England’s batsmen still have a tendency to implode for no particular reason. B. They’re often capable of salvaging seemingly hopeless situations. C. Stuart Broad has recovered some of his pace, but still doesn’t look particularly threatening (but who did on this surface?), D. Monty Panesar is still very one-dimensional, and E. Nick Compton has a good temperament.

The final point is probably the most significant thing to emerge from this match; we knew the others beforehand. Compton showed good mental strength in a tricky situation, and although he appears to have less shots than Chris Tavare, the ones he does have are executed with panache.

He’s definitely earned his place in the team for the rest of the series – if not the Ashes quite yet – even if Finn’s success with the bat against the Kiwis’ limited attack, on the most benign of pitches, puts his innings into a slightly different context.

At the very least, Compton’s confidence should be sky-high now. We can expect him to play with more authority in the subsequent games. He’s got a great chance to cement his place – and his technique looks pretty solid to me.

What have we learned about New Zealand? Not a lot really. They’re still the plucky side containing a few genuinely talented guys that we always thought they were. I can’t really tell you anything else. This pitch put paid to that. This wasn’t exactly a normal kind of test match.

James Morgan