Two games into this series England were rampant and New Zealand, in the words of their own captain, Tim Southee, were “rotten”. But on a balmy evening at Trent Bridge in which Jonny Bairstow’s batting and Rehan Ahmed’s precociousness represented the home side’s only bright spots, the Black Caps completed their comeback with the fourth emphatic win of a topsy-turvy 10 days.
England won the toss and were powered through a promising start by Bairstow, but New Zealand spun their way back into contention before picking up their bats and bludgeoning their way to victory by six wickets, with 16 balls to spare. By the end England were ragged, and it was fitting that Rachin Ravindra’s winning boundary was helped on its way by a misfield.
Bairstow was the only English batter to excel, contributing 73 of their 175 runs, but the Black Caps’ quality ran deeper. Of England’s top six only Bairstow scored at a strike rate above 150; of New Zealand’s not one dipped below it, with Tim Seifert and the superb Glenn Phillips falling within sniffing distance of half-centuries, a mark Mark Chapman looked certain to reach had his team not won the game before he could get there.
There were moments of good fortune – Phillips let out a cry of anguish as he top-edged a Brydon Carse delivery in the 13th over only for the ball to loop well past the boundary, and two balls later Chapman also edged one, along the ground this time, for four – but some spectacular clean hitting, too, on a night when few of England’s plans came good.
One of them was for Jos Buttler to have a rest. Instead England’s white-ball captain was forced to don the gloves as an injury substitute after Bairstow reported a painful right shoulder. “I’ll be fine,” the Yorkshireman said later. “We’ve got a lot of cricket ahead of us and it’s more a precaution.” Thus even England’s one truly successful batter had a night of mixed fortunes, a situation well beyond the reach of most of his teammates.
Will Jacks added a 15-ball 16 to his previous efforts of 22, 19 and 11, his four innings between them comprising a muted shoulder-shrug of a series. None of Harry Brook, Moeen Ali and Sam Curran scored more than five, meaning the first of these at least did not add further fuel to the fiery debates surrounding his claims to a place in the World Cup squad. Dawid Malan and Liam Livingstone produced superficially near-identical innings of 26, off 21 and 20 deliveries respectively.
In all of this Bairstow’s contribution was a beautiful anomaly. The 33-year-old was making his first appearance on this ground since the 77-ball hundred, and total of 136, that powered England to Test victory over these opponents last year. With six sixes and five fours he sparked a few memories of that day, not least among those ducking for cover in the Smith Cooper Stand.
In their innings, as in the series, England looked impressive at the halfway stage but faltered. After their seamers struggled New Zealand found respite in spin and Ish Sodhi, Mitchell Santner and Ravindra conceded just 68 in their 10 overs, taking six wickets in the process. Ravindra replaced Devon Conway in their only change and after Kyle Jamieson’s two overs went for 35 – the second featuring three successive wides of varying degrees of haplessness – demonstrated the benefit of having a spin-bowling all-rounder in the lineup (this did not come as a surprise to England, who had four of them). Tim Southee and Matt Henry returned impressively at the death to leave New Zealand with a relatively paltry target.
The question for them in their run chase, on a notoriously batter-friendly ground, was whether they should take confidence from the ease with which Bairstow scored, or take fright from the struggles of his teammates. Finn Allen biffed the first ball of their innings over extra cover for four, Seifert dumped the fourth over mid-on, and their answer was clear.
Again the spinners shifted the momentum in the middle overs. Ahmed was the pick, conceding just 27 and claiming two wickets as well as collecting Luke Wood’s fine throw to whip off the bails and run out Daryl Mitchell. But England could not stem the flow of boundaries and after Chapman hit Adil Rashid for a four and a gorgeous six off successive balls in the 16th over there was no coming back.
