Captain Cock-Up? Well, when he puts the opposition in and they cruise to 250 for one by the close of day one of a decisive Test, Alastair Cook cannot expect to take plaudits. Brisbane 2002 anyone? At least England got two wickets that day after Nasser Hussain had inserted Australia before they racked up 364.
But the curious thing is that, if you offered the England captain the chance to choose again, he would probably still have a bowl and trust his team to do better. The logic is that this drop-in pitch here at the rugby stadium which staged the last World Cup final will just get better.
There were some murmurings of sour grapes when David Saker, the England bowling coach, said after the second Test that the pitches for this series were spoiling Test cricket as a spectacle.
Yet if this surface really will play as predicted and simply not deteriorate in any way over five days, then you can understand Saker’s point.
New Zealand may have exceded all expectations in making much of the running in this series but it has not always been pretty to watch.
That is to take nothing away from the hosts’ batting yesterday at Eden Park. They were handed the chance of having first go and took advantage with considerable aplomb.
England’s gamble was that there might be some life early on, as there often was in the early days of drop-in pitches here, but it simply did not happen.
The same attack who are embarking on the third of three back-to-back Tests did not have any encouragement from conditions whatsoever.
‘I don’t think it’s a disastrous day’s Test cricket for us,’ insisted Steven Finn, one of England’s bowling victims.
‘Yes we’d like to have taken more than one wicket but they’ve only got 250 on the board and a crazy session can turn the game on its head.
‘There did look as though there might be something in the pitch before play. There was plenty of grass on it, but that just seems to be holding the wicket together rather than offering us assistance.
‘We did expect it to do a bit more but after we realised it wouldn’t I thought we stuck to our task pretty well.’
They cannot be said to have bowled particularly well, however. Jimmy Anderson came into this Test needing five wickets to join the exclusive 300 club, but he rarely threatened with his weary body.
Finn, who began using his new shortened run up to productive effect in the one-day series, has lacked rhythm using it in the Test series.
Stuart Broad may have taken six wickets in an innings in Wellington but he was ineffective, while Monty Panesar again found the surface far from conducive to his brand of spin.
The good news of the day, from a New Zealand and neutral viewpoint, was a maiden Test century for 34-year-old Peter Fulton, a man who came into this series after a four-year absence with a Test average of just 21.
He scored a half-century in the first Test in Dunedin — only his second at this level — but still gave the impression that he was just keeping a place warm for Martin Guptill to come back for the return series in England in May. Not any more. ‘Two-metre Peter’ will be around for a while yet.
‘At the start of this season I did wonder if I’d have another chance to get a Test hundred,’ said Fulton.
‘I clearly still wanted to play for New Zealand, but once you’ve been in and out of the side a few times you get to that stage where you might have had your last go. Thankfully that wasn’t the case’
The pitch here has been turned around since the Rugby World Cup final and the straight boundaries are only 67 metres long, just above the minimum demanded by the International Cricket Council.
That was always going to increase the chances of six-hitting and sure enough Hamish Rutherford made his intentions clear by striking Panesar straight for two sixes in the same over, before he was out just before lunch flashing outside the off-stump at Finn.
And that was pretty much it for England.
Fulton hit three sixes of his own before he reached three figures and the only blemish came on 12 when he edged an Anderson delivery just wide of a diving Joe Root at third slip.
Alongside him was Kane Williamson, the future of New Zealand batting, who was 83 not out before England’s suffering, at least for yesterday, was brought to a close. – Daily Mail