Eng Test tour of NZ, Feb 16-28

[bigfluffylemon]

Brook now has an average and strike rate greater than 100.

Also the highest 4th wicket partnership for England in tests v New Zealand.

[bigfluffylemon]

And now the highest partnership for England in New Zealand for any wicket.

[alfie]

Brook's astonishing start to Test Cricket continues ! Given the situation at which he came in and the early batting conditions , I reckon this has been his best innings yet.

Comparison with Pietersen inevitable. As you say , BFL , it took KP five matches to get a hundred : but in his defence , he was facing McGrath Lee Gillespie and Warne

Almost glad of a rain break to reflect on all this. From the dramatic start that seemed to have England staring over a cliff to this fantastic partnership : Test Cricket just keeps on giving

[bigfluffylemon]

Root hundred as well

With all the carnage, England are only on 300 - will need to press on to have enough on what looks like a pretty flat deck.

[alfie]

Yeah they will want to push on tomorrow. Mind you , with these two plus Stokes in next (and the Nighthawk waiting in the wings !) that should not be a huge problem

NZ took a bit of a punt on loading their batting. Might have come off if they'd been able to grab a couple more wickets in that first hour or so - but it has come back to bite them as the day progressed. Brook seems able to carve up most bowlers , so part timers and out of form third pacemen have no hope. They will need their batting depth later , I think. Though since the early life died quickly I suspect England's bowlers might have to work a bit too.

Really happy to see Root back in runs. Wasn't actually worried about him (everyone has an occasional lean patch) but he did seem a little conflicted as to how he ought to play in this batting line-up ; and this reversion to his natural game should help to give him clarity. No need for the whole team to play t20 cricket with a red ball...his style is an important counterpoint.

[Durhamfootman]

must have been a sizeable rain break with only 65 overs in the day's play

Pleased for Root. I'm guessing that with Brook seemingly scoring at will, there was no internal pressure to start ramping the quicks and so could just get on with his natural game and keep rotating the strike.

Harry Brook is astonishing, frankly. KP won't be happy with Brook's early test career being compared more favourably than his own, but it's fair enough... he's only played a handful of tests and I've already lost track of how many hundreds he has. YJB might have to open if he wants to get back in the side.

[sussexpob]

I can see the comparison to KP and Brooks, although I would have said that KP moved his feet a lot more freely at times for a bigger, tall guy, where as Brooks approach is to set his feet with almost minimal movement, stand tall and use that base as a platform to hit. Usually you look at a batter and can make a sort of assessment of how his technique will hold up in test cricket, but I must confess that Brooks is somewhat of an enigma to me. In many ways, you can say positives could be negatives, and visa versa.

From a very general level, his technique is simple. He tries to keep the head up, the body tall and still - the net effect is there is very little foot movement, but the positive is his eyes are always on the ball. One part of me thinks he will struggle to fast paced balls that move outside his offstump, the other thinks at the moment that the way he is watching the ball means he generally connect well with it. There have been hints in some innings that particularly outside off stump when the ball is moving away, there is a tendency for him to stretch out a little and lose his balance. In Pakistan that happened a few times, and ironically he was saved from trouble by not really timing the balls. He squirted a few boundaries into the covers where you thought if he really middled the ball its going to fly chest height to the offside ring fielders. And I have seen him defend balls outside his off stump being quite side on to the ball, and with his bat not pointing down the pitch, but open to the covers. On Pakistans flat pitches that was fine, but in England, will he get away with that?

There are hints of Graeme Smith about the way he plays spin too. Stand stall, get very deep in the crease, hit down on the ball. Nothing wrong with that, but again he has shown a desire to take on balls that really arent that short, particularly into the leg side. I remember he scored 24 in Pakistan in one over for instance, and about 3-4 of those hits were to balls hitting low on the bat, where really he doesn't time it, but the power he has in those arms seem to at times make up for it. Its almost like he can bottom edge it with a fluffed connection, but he's so strong, he gets it away into the outfield at decent speed. And as a positive, when he doesnt time these balls, he does get them downwards. He is rarely hitting in the air.

I guess in conclusion, I dont really know how Brooks is going to go. There is an unfussy, simplicity to his batting that plays to his strengths that I really love and want him to do well, because you can easily coach a batter to stick to a handful of fundamentals, and techniques with few moving parts are easier to correct when things go wrong....

But there are also hints of the Dave Warner about him (see the Aussie game thread)... would he fall apart if the ball moves a lot? Can he consistently play a spinning ball?

I guess these are questions for the future. Right now the boy is on fire, and cant get out if he tried

[sussexpob]

With the way England bat, Brooks could beat Lara's record before midday tomorrow... watch this space

[sussexpob]

Good to see Root scoring another 100 too. I think thats his 5th x 100 since Stokes took over as captain. That is what I like to see..... Root getting back to the job of being England's run machine, and being nowhere near decision making. Poor Joe was a crap captain.

[Arthur Crabtree]

Not seen Brook, but your description made me think of Jos Buttler.

Bairstow looking at the keeper spot again?

[sussexpob]

Bairstow looking at the keeper spot again?

Before this series began, there was a general belief that even though Brooks was scoring, he would make way for Bairstow in a fully fit squad.... but there is no chance on god's green earth that Brooks is getting dropped now, and I would rate the chances of a fully fit Bairstow missing out in any capacity on a a similar scale after last year.

But you look at the team, and think Duckett is a specialist opener coming of a successful spell, so he feels a lock in.
Root doesnt want to bat at 3, and Pope has done better since Stokes/McCullum came in, so I doubt its him.
Crawley is continually under par, but McCullum is on record as saying they dont care about Crawley mis-firing a lot, and seemed to suggest last summer they will back him in the long term despite not much in return, based on what they see as his potential.

So who makes way? I guess Foakes is the easy one to replace, but he's such a better keeper than Bairstow.

Although this is Bazball.... so it feels more likely that Bairstow is going to replace Crawley as opener, and start teeing off ODI/T20I style from ball one. Id suggest thats a terrible idea, but then again I think everything I have seen of Bazball feels like its been conjured up from a pub conversation that occurs at 3am on a Sunday morning, so what the hell do I know....

Crawley has to go really. Aside from 90s Zimbabwe, and a few other historically poor sides, how many guys averaging not much over 25 get to play 33 tests?

In fact, get your money on the nighthawk being elevated to the dayhawk.... start the innings with a pinch hitting tailender. You laugh, but at the moment, I wouldnt be surprised if the Ashes was won on the back of the dayhawk smashing 4 hundreds with a SR of 400....

Everything these two touch at the moment, turns to gold.

[andy]

Barstow certainly is an intresting one.....on last year's form he has to come in ..however he has been out for ages with no game time...does he come back in?? Foskes surely is a lock in ..class gloveman and you need someone in that line up who can bat in a different way at some point ....Crawley for me has to go he simply isn't consistent enough for test cricket...but Barstow isn't a test opener ..for me he has to bide his time now

[Durhamfootman]

Getting rid of Foakes would be a terrible idea, imo, now that we finally have a quality gloveman who can also bat reliably, and YJB would be a bit of a waste opening when he can very quickly take the game away from teams from lower down the order once the ball has stopped moving. SP jokingly mentions the 'dayhawk', but someone at the BBC mentioned this today and Dobell suggested it at the end of the 1st test, perhaps with tongue in cheek, that the answer to fitting Bairstow into this side might involve Stokes replacing Crawley at the top of the order to do just that.

It sounds completely bonkers, but with this England leadership who would rule anything out? Except that when he took the captaincy, Stokes said he wanted to bat at 6, so I guess we wait and see. YJB has a bit of county cricket to play first to get some match fitness and form back. It was a very unfortunate time for him to go off on a golfing jolly.

It might equally be that if the bowlers have to accept being rotated/rested between matches or between series, then so perhaps might the batters

[bigfluffylemon]

England have thrown this away a bit - Brook went early, and since then it's been a steady procession at a run rate of 6.5. To my mind England should have been targeting over 500, but they obviously thought differently, and as soon as Root hit 150 they've declared, even though he's still batting.

Seems like an odd decision, given days 2 and 3 are pretty likely to be good for batting and Root was still going, why not get as many as possible? It's not like they're going to run out of time.

Still, Stokes' decisions have all come off so far, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. They're obviously keen to get stuck into the NZ batters.

Also, declaring with Joe Root 150 not out hauls his average back over 50...

[Arthur Crabtree]

Well done Joe. Quite an achievement.

Odd looking scorecard.