Sixteen wickets on the first day were followed by 17 more on the second, although, like the bounce on this mischievous wicket, nothing seemed predictable. The day ended in glorious afternoon sunshine, shadows stretching as England’s lead was slowly and clumsily reduced. But still wickets fell, even if it was a trickle rather than the torrent that started New Zealand’s first innings, and at 36 for three, their target of 254 still feels a long way off.
The chase started terribly, with Tom Latham bowling the third ball to Harry Brook at second slip. From then on, Kane Williamson and Devon Conway were determined (and, in the case of the latter, on the right side of the referee’s decision), and held on until the final minutes of the day, when Williamson was caught lbw by Josh Tongue and Will O’Rourke, the night watchman, was bowled by Gus Atkinson. In the end, the only thing that effectively stemmed the flow of layoffs were the stumps.
Only once in a Test match in England were the first two innings completed more quickly, and that was 119 years ago. On a rain-interrupted day and less than an hour into the next, 20 wickets had fallen at the rate of one every 20.8 deliveries, the match lurched and stumbled forward to a soundtrack of clattering stumps and fist-bumps.
Then, for about an hour before lunch and a similar period afterward, England conjured a certain calm. It was awkward, certainly at first, and could have been shortened had Rachin Ravindra not dropped Ben Duckett in the fifth over of the innings when the opener was on 12. The same fielder had taken a direct chance off Brook on the opening day, but this was worse, the ball not only failing to stay in his hands, but somehow not even able to touch them as he leaned to his left at midwicket.
Despite an excellent low catch from Glenn Phillips to dismiss Duckett for 33, that fall set the tone for the New Zealand fielders: just before lunch, Gay edged Henry between first and second slip, the ball passed them both before either man moved, and just after, the ball flew off the edge of Jacob Bethell towards Conway at the back point.
Conway, who had also dropped Brook on Thursday, put his hands up but dropped the ball, as did O’Rourke, the pitcher on both occasions whose excellence has gone unrewarded. In between, two balls into the second session, New Zealand had opted not to review when Henry hit Gay on the bag; Within moments, Mitchell Santner, appearing in the locker room window with his finger raised, indicated what would have happened if they had made a different decision.
England had been 72-1 at lunch, with a lead of 116, a potentially comfortable position made uncomfortable by memories of the start of their last Test series, where they lunched on the second day in Perth at 59-1 and a lead of 99, and when they returned to their hotel they had lost the match. Surely they would have decided to simply prolong that precious feeling of calm, but the Lord’s speech had other ideas.
There was nothing immediately frightening about the last delivery of the 26th over, bowled by Matt Henry, whose efforts were again limited due to back problems, to Bethell, but then the ball hit the ground and he liked it so much that it stayed there. It was as convincing a fist in the act of bouncing as Ravindra had made, a little earlier, in the act of catching. Landing at mid-wicket, it skidded rebelliously under the bat of the bewildered Bethell and sent an astonished off-stump cartwheeling, beginning a brief, bewildering spell in which the game served as joyful chaos. gelatiera dispenses scoops, in a variety of flavors.
Out of nowhere and nowhere, Gay, who had been quietly and carefully accumulating runs at a rate of 2.9 per six deliveries faced, plundered 16 off a single Nathan Smith, completing his first Test half-century in the process. He then fell for 57, giving the keeper the lead against Smith, O’Rourke caught Brook lbw in the next over, and Smith sent out Joe Root, also lbw, and bowled an awkwardly statuesque Ben Stokes in the next. From 126 for two, England moved to 127 for six and the ground was moving under their feet, as it might have done under the ball that felled Bethell.
At that point, this being a game of endless surprises, Jamie Smith and Atkinson formed the biggest partnership of the match, and when that was broken, Smith and Ollie Robinson added 29 runs for the eighth wicket, of which Smith, the better batsman and set-up, contributed three. When he was out, courtesy of another picker, Robinson scored 25 for 15; when Robinson himself followed exactly 15 balls later to complete England’s innings, Nathan Smith’s excellence was finally rewarded with six wickets, he having added just four.
New Zealand had started the day by adding 52 runs to their overnight score of 66 for six, most of them during a genuinely strange period in which England, having quickly removed Smith and the dangerous Phillips, decided that asking Robinson to bowl 78mph bouncers against a tailender whose shot is his favorite shot might be a good idea, allowing Kyle to gallop to 38 for 29 with three sixes.
