It has not always been deliberate, but nobody could accuse England of not being entertaining. They go into Day Four needing 61 to win with five wickets remaining but, just to complicate matters, with a tail end that could very successfully audition for starring roles in an amateur production of Watership Down.
It was as if the hosts awoke on the morning of Day Three, decided that New Zealand’s patient and match-altering accumulation of runs on the afternoon of the second day had been too dull for the cricketing world to bear, and promptly decided to do something about it, no matter the cost.
England need 61 more to win the Lord’s Test with five wickets in hand. AP
Unsurprisingly Stuart Broad, one of world cricket’s premier entertainers – albeit not always intentionally, was at the heart of things early on, serving up a perfect comedy, not quite a hat trick. Catch behind, bizarre runout, flattened stumps – the Imran Tahir-esque celebration as he ran manically off towards the Tavern Stand only adding to the moment.
It was a near-flawless morning for England. Behind in the game, they came roaring back, snapping up the final six New Zealand wickets for just 34 – against all the odds picking their way safely along their only and perilous path back into contention.
Their target for victory then was set at 277, a simple enough proposition you might assume, on a Day Three pitch with no obvious demons hidden in it – that is unless you happen to have watched England bat any time in recent memory.
A hallmark of this England side in recent years has been their unerring ability to be three wickets down with less than 50 runs on the board – no matter the recent total regime change, this was an opportunity they once again were powerless to pass up here at Lord’s.
Such was England’s undying, largely unintentional, commitment to entertainment it seriously began to impinge on their hopes of victory. Alex Lees, just as he finally seemed to be finding some fluency with the bat, shouldered arms and saw his off-stump knocked back. Jonny Bairstow, apparently labouring under the misapprehension that the match had to be finished in time for tea, swatted three boundaries in an over before loosely driving at a wide ball in the next and chopping the ball onto his own stumps.
However as so often is the case, the best, entertainment-wise, was left to Ben Stokes. From start to finish it was an unconventional innings from England’s new captain, at times he barely seemed to know which end of the bat to use, at others he was clinically launching sixes high into the grandstand.
The defining moment of the day, and perhaps possibly in the match too, came in the 27th over of the innings, Stokes with a Sliding Doors moment that would have put Gwyneth Paltrow to shame. Determined to win a seemingly entirely self-instigated battle of wills with Colin De Grandhomme, he charged down the pitch to a delivery and only succeeded in chopping the ball onto his own stumps.
Out for 1 from 19 balls was possibly what his frenetic performance until that point deserved, but just as the birthday boy Stokes had nearly trudged all the way back to the boundary, he was recalled, De Grandhomme had overstepped – the no ball proving to be the perfect present for the man who has everything.
Stokes eventually had 50 and while his partnership with Root stretched towards three figures things seemed to be going almost unnervingly well for England – it was not a position they would enjoy for long, the skipper’s Bizarro World innings meeting a suitably funky end, gloving Kyle Jamieson through to keeper as he attempted to uppercut it over the cordon.
It left England with 118 still to win, thanks largely to Joe Root it was almost half that by the close, a thrillingly entertaining day of Test cricket in the books but the tantalisingly unknown conclusion still yet to come.
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