New Zealand vs. England, Second Test: Day Three Review

Posted on March 16, 2013 by Nichael Bluth in Tests

England 465

New Zealand 254 (McCullum 69, Watling 60; Broad 6/51) & 77/1 (Fulton 41*)

New Zealand trail by 134 with nine second innings wickets in hand.

 

In two words

Mostly harmless.

In more words

Despite our best efforts to stay awake for the entirety of Friday night, this one mostly passed us by. After the false start in Dunedin, this was the series conforming to the script that everyone had expected from the off – New Zealand struggling to make runs against England’s seam attack. Despite the best efforts of Brendon McCullum, who again teed off like an Indian batsman slaughtering the worst Australian attack in history, and BJ Watling, the home side limped towards the follow on target before eventually falling just short.

Those missing 12 runs could make all the difference, given the indifferent weather forecasts for the next two days that can be expected to take a chunk of time out of the game.

Player of the day

Stuart Broad might be the most annoying man in the world. No-one doubts his talent but his consistency, or complete lack thereof, drives us absolutely mental. Many is the TV remote ruined through a high speed interface with the wall when Broad wanders in and bangs the ball into the middle of the pitch at 70mph. Luckily, this wasn’t one of those days.

Broad’s six wicket haul wasn’t necessarily his finest performance – there were a few poor shot selections to help him along the way – but it will go a long way to once again dashing the dreams of poor Graham Onions, a man destined to carry drinks until the day he dies. Or retires to hang around with Lily Allen.

Outlook

It’s not looking great for Saturday night: there’s some rain forecast and we have plans to drink neat gin until we pass out, so it’s a straight race between the two. England’s bowlers struggled to make the same impact in the second innings and will probably have to dig in to find a way through New Zealand for a second time. Monty Panesar may well be required to move away from bowling wicket to wicket medium pace and actually try and turn the ball, something he hasn’t even attempted yet, as far as we can tell.