Jonny Bairstow smashed a scintillating 92-ball 136 in a sunny afternoon in Nottingham as Johnny blew up the New Zealand bowling after consuming a tea-time ‘ham and cheese toast’.
“This is really one of the great Test matches I’ve seen anywhere,” Nasser Hussain said on commentary. And despite hitting four sixes and 10 fours in an unbeaten knock of 75 not out off 70 balls, Ben Stokes should, of all people, have the second fiddle to play.
Alright, the captain picked some Headingley 2019 cut shots to score the winning runs. England now have two in two matches since one win in 17 Tests. What a difference a year makes. When England played New Zealand last summer at Lord’s, the match just ended in a draw when presented with a similar equation. Set 273 in 75 overs to win on the final day, England showed no appetite for a run chase, with Dom Sibley’s 207-ball dead-batting far from the entertainment served at Trent Bridge.
Then-captain Joe Root and then-coach Chris Silverwood probably saw a team feeling cut off as regulars in India late last winter, and with Bairstow and Stokes injured, there was no chance of injury.
Perhaps they wanted to instill a steely resilience on the side, so that they could learn how not to give up. And if that was indeed the inspiration, it certainly isn’t at the forefront of Stokes and new head coach Brendon McCullum’s agenda – evident not only from the incidents on the field during their first two games in charge, but those also by.
In his unveiling as captain, Stokes also spoke of his team’s desire to include “selfless cricketers who make decisions based on winning games”. Meanwhile, McCullum said that when he was first presented to the media it was “a fear of failure in English cricketers” which he wanted to eliminate.