Sixteen wickets on the first day were followed by 17 more on the second, though like the bounce on this mischievous wicket nothing about it felt at all predictable. The day ended in glorious evening sunshine, shadows stretching as England’s lead was slowly, awkwardly reduced. But still the wickets fell, even if in a trickle rather than the torrent that started New Zealand’s first innings, and at 36 for three their target of 254 still feels very distant.
The run chase started terribly, with Tom Latham edging the third ball high to Harry Brook at second slip. Thereafter Kane Williamson and Devon Conway were resolute – and, in the latter’s case, on the right side of an umpire’s call – as they clung on until the final minutes of the day, when Williamson was trapped lbw by Josh Tongue and Will O’Rourke, the nightwatcher, was bowled by Gus Atkinson. In the end the only thing that effectively stemmed the stream of dismissals was stumps.
Only once in a Test match in England had the first two innings been completed more quickly, and that was 119 years ago. In one rain-interrupted day and less than an hour of the next, 20 wickets had fallen at the rate of one every 20.8 deliveries, the match lurching and stumbling forwards to a soundtrack of clattering stumps and fielding fist bumps.
Then, for about an hour before lunch and a similar period after it, England conjured a measure of calm. It was uncomfortable, certainly initially, and might have been abbreviated had Rachin Ravindra not dropped Ben Duckett in the fifth over of the innings when the opener was on 12. The same fielder had put down a straightforward chance off Brook on the opening day but this was worse, the ball not just failing to stay in his hands but somehow failing even to touch them as he stooped to his left at midwicket.
Notwithstanding an excellent low grab by Glenn Phillips to dismiss Duckett for 33, that drop rather set the tone for New Zealand’s fielders: just before lunch Gay edged Henry between first and second slip, the ball past them both before either moved, and just after it the ball flew off Jacob Bethell’s edge to Conway at backward point. Conway, who had also dropped Brook on Thursday, brought his hands up but let the ball down – and likewise O’Rourke, the bowler on both occasions, whose excellence has been under-rewarded. In between, two balls into the second session, New Zealand had chosen not to review when Gay was thumped on the pad by Henry; within moments Mitchell Santner, appearing in the dressing-room window with finger raised, had indicated what would have happened had they made a different call.
England had been 72 for one at lunch, nursing a lead of 116, a potentially comfortable position rendered awkward by memories of the start of their last Test series, where they took lunch on the second day in Perth at 59 for one and with a lead of 99, and by the time they got back to their hotel had lost the match. They would surely have resolved simply to prolong that precious sense of calm, but the Lord’s pitch had other ideas.
