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“This week there’s probably a lot more riding on it than it normally would be, going into the final game of a three-match series being 1-1,” Ben Stokes said yesterday on Wednesday. He was facing the media for the first time since the first Test concluded with victory at Lord’s when he spoke innocently about not being “really happy until I get to share a beer with the boys”. We all know how that went.
For England the story is of yet another reset, after the post-Ashes business-as-usual-only-different reset, which then led into a debutant-stuffed reset 2.0. The latter was forced by events in Chelsea’s Rex Rooms nightclub and the England and Wales Cricket Board’s reaction to them. And now, after a physically and morally sapping defeat at the Oval and the ECB’s conclusion that there was, to all intents and purposes, no incident at the Rex Rooms nighclub after all, England go again.
This time the pressure really is on, with Ben Stokes’ side seeking the victory that would not only decide the series in their favour but provide much-needed evidence that they are not some kind of elaborate practical joke.
After their issues over the winter, coming into the series the situation demanded a projection of seriousness and competence. Evidently, that has not come to pass.
With New Zealand and Pakistan the visitors, this was always going to be a less intense summer than some, but it did not have to be so very village, marked by dodgy pitches, drunken escapades, rules that nobody knows, management whose reflexive reaction to a potential disciplinary breach that imperilled the career of their Test captain was to identify themselves as victims, total team overhauls from one game to the next.
Suddenly Stokes finds himself as “definitely the highest amount of pressure we’ve been under since me and Baz [Brendon McCullum] became coach and captain”.
The decision of all England’s senior figures to brazen out the post-Ashes furore and hope the situation would be calmed by a self-proclaimed reset and a few good results at home against theoretically beatable opponents seemed, after a rousing victory at Lord’s, to have allowed them to swerve a crisis. Now it is closing in on them again, potentially one defeat away.
The impact of all of this has been to ramp up the figurative heat on a now decisive third Test, which given that the actual literal heatwave has been inflated will make for a fiery few days. “I wouldn’t say it’s a concern,” Tom Latham, the New Zealand captain, said of the forecast. “As international cricketers we’re used to playing around the world in some pretty hot conditions.”
Perhaps, but he will be braced for a coin toss that will potentially decide the Test. The losers are almost certainly destined for a prolonged period of toil, bowling in heat predicted by the Met Office to be in the low- to mid-thirties for most of the first two days. It is Ollie Robinson’s evident unsuitability for such a task that forced him to sit this one out.
Whoever wins that toss would not only get the opportunity to bat through those conditions but also to make best use of their spinner later in the game. Shoaib Bashir returns for England, while the decision to rest Kyle Jamieson has conveniently opened a Mitchell Santner-shaped space in the New Zealand side.
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For Bashir, who has not bowled in a Test match since he took the decisive wicket against India at Lord’s last July with a broken finger, the toss of a coin could bust or boost his chance of a much-needed personal reset. Two games into the summer, England are full of players who need similar.
Stokes said he clarified and simplified his approach to batting while scoring 95 for Durham last week, which may help him end a dire run that has seen him average just over five in his past seven Test innings.
Ben Duckett, on his home ground, is in search of what would be a first Test 50 since last July, a run that would probably have ended at the Oval had he not been run out by his new opening partner, Emilio Gay. Jacob Bethell may feel similarly aggrieved: he has scored 29 runs in four innings in this series, but the best of them was ended by a Matt Henry grubber. He has averaged 6.66 in three Tests in this country and the home crowds want to see some of that Sydney swagger.
Thanks in very small part to to Bethell and that bad bounce, on Wednesday Henry ascended to (joint) top of the ICC’s Test bowling rankings, which means that for the second summer in a row English fans will enjoy the battle between the world’s best batter – now, as then, Joe Root, who in the latest update overtook Harry Brook to begin a 12th stint at No 1 – and the world’s best bowler.
Jasprit Bumrah shares that title with Henry for now, but with India not due to play another Test until the two meet in New Zealand in November, Henry looks destined to take sole leadership when the rankings are again updated next week.
