The Black Caps attack appears to be lacking penetration.. specially their leader Trent Boult. England got away from them in the final session and are now setting themselves up to take control today.

NZ should have played Ferg over Santner, but 2 of NZ's stars that the cricket world knows nothing about continue to shine. 

BJ Watling now averages 42.33 as a wicket keeper, and I can tell you he sucks at downhill skiing and only makes the hard runs. Colin De Grandhomme now averages over 40 with the bat, and 30.02 with the ball as hecomes the most non super star allrounder in test cricket. While Shakib, Stokes, Holder, Jadeja steal the limelight, CdG just goes from strength to strength compokletely unntotived. Same with BJ. 

Hope Poms lose! 

They are well on the way to losing. Black Caps are giving them a royal touch up. 

Watling.. impressive, on a belter tho it must be said. 

England is fighting for a draw - but they have been completely outplayed by NZ. 

Watling just broke their bowlers. Broad and Archer bowled over 70 overs combined for just 1 wicket.

NZ need 6 wickets in 2 sessions with 170 needed to avoid an innings defeat. 

Pommies self destructing with some bizarre dismissals. Firstly Root forgot he was playing Test cricket. Then Pope with a poorly executed shot and Buttler with one of the worst leaves you will ever see. Denly the only one to be excused when he copped a ball that sprung up like a viper from nowhere to catch a glove.

Heh -that Buttler leave was terrible. It was a knuckle ball that got Pope though, the ball just never arrived to him.

Pitch was a road, but this England batting is terrible.

Alec Stewart is claiming that England played indefensibly badly, and that only KW would make the England team. 

Interesting claim this. Because Henry Nicholls is rated above Joe Root and Watling is almost guaranteed to get wicket keeper batsman of the year in the icc awards - averaging 85 for the year already with just 3 tests to go. 

Now "of course" Stokes would get chosen ahead of CdG, but this still ignores CdG has a batting average over 40, and a bowling averaging under 30. So forget about Sam Curran taking his place. Would Ross Taylor really lose out to Denley? 

I think Stewart is out of touch where England and NZ are respectively, its been a long time since England was last on top off of NZ in a test series.  Not since one test in 2015 when Stokes saved England and McCullum was too aggressive instead of letting the match decline to a draw, which NZ has been on top of, has England looked like beating NZ anywhere. But NZ was on top for most of that match, and then thrashed England in the next test. 

Broad keeping Boult out? I doubt that. And NZ didn't even play one of its two better spinners, they played an allrounder who came up trumps with a test century in a match winning partnership.

Alec, the NZ team has some talent at present, and there is hopefully much more to come in WIll Young, Devon Conway (Sep eligible) and Lockie Fergusson. Try watching some NZ cricket before judging us, we got to #2 cos we have been playing well for 4 years... (its actually longer than this, its been since SA 2012/13)

Interesting that of the three test matches in the past week, the home team has won each of them by an innings. Not that this is wholly unexpected (apart from the poms to some extent).

The West Indies thrashed the poms earlier this year by 10 wickets in one match and 380 runs in the first. I'm surprised England still thinks anyone rates them in test cricket.

They have no batting at all. None. They talk like Ben Stokes is the coming of Jesus, I am not at all convinced he makes the NZ team ahead of CdG or the WI team agead of Holder. 

As for Joe Root, been a while since he did anything consistently in tests. Bairstow's been dropped. Cook ran away to early retirement. 

England are rubbish. They rely far too much on Root, Stokes and Archer to bust a game open for them. Taylor and KW havn't scored centuries for NZ in a while now. Latham sure has. So has Watling... NZ has one passenger, Raval, and we can all you the the 3 players that he is keeping out and why - Will Young - injured, Devon Conway - September - Rachin Ravindra - our next star batsman, just turned 20.

Give us the gen on Devon Conway.. guess he is West Indian given he is waiting eligibility.. shades of Jofra Archer for England if that is the case. 

I fully concur on your view of Stokes.. yes he produces the odd incredible innings.. intermixed with many low scores.. so any wonder he only averages @mid 30s in test cricket. Root is on the slippery slide.. and how. The terrible shot he played to lose his wicket in the first test was inexplicable. Was he forgetting he was playing Test cricket and in the situation of the game.. inexcusable.

Conway is a SAffir import. Totally stolen and imported. Unashamedly from Safrica. Best domestic batsman lasst 2 years in NZ (bar Will Young - back to back centuries and a 50 against top Aus team in WC warm ups) but injured. Yes - NZ depth is that strong in batting right now. It really really is. Never seen this before in my life. At all. We have more batsmen that we can handle. Seam bowling isn't great. Spin bowling a lil old and dusty. We have batting cover better than in the actual team, though. NZA could easily beat NZ right now. I mean this. 

September eligible for Conway... Just smashed a tripple century this month in domestic... He is very very good...

NZA

1 Hay
2Rachin
3 Young
4 Conway
B5lundell +
6Phillips + (yes they both keep, then there id Dylan Cleaver - KW's cousin who also keeps)
7Mitchell
8Ferg
9Sommerville
10Henry
11Patel/Jamieson

12/13 Hamish Bennett / Scott K (im seriousssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss)

Notice no Neesham. Even in this team...... Finn Allen century vs Eng test team waarmup.... NOT EEVEN CLOSEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE - forget about him.... Glenn Phillips, nopes - no room for him.

We have never had depth like this ever before that I know of. Tbh. We're so strong, the selectors are getting it wrong. Entirely. The WC XI bowler Ferg who bowls 150+ wont even replace Boult next test.  We literally can field 2 teams as good as each other.... I cannot pick a  winner. At all.

Still Phillips, McConnhie, Sears and Tickner to come. 

Its unprecendented in NZ domestic right now. UNPRECEDENTED. If we just had a Bond or a  Hadlee....


We're so strong right now, the selectors are getting it so wrong... That is how strong NZC is right now... We can give away more Ben Stokes or Clarrie Grimmets right now if anyone wants one... Im not even lying... Our domestic comp is off the charts.... We ,ay lose to India and In Australia this summer, but we have 5 more years of NZ dominating the rankings at levels people are not used too.... tbh...

Bolult is injured and out of this test. Colin de Grandhomme is injured and out of this test. Young is still injured - having missed his debut match in Chch in March due to the shooting.

Mitchell will replace de Grandhomme, which seems a like for like replacement. There is no like replacement for Boult being a leftie that swings the ball at 140, but the selectors are going with 130km nibbler Henry (SERIOUSLY) over 150km+ Ferg debuting. Henry only offers new ball bowling - and the kooky doesnt not offer much for long. So its a peculiar decision by the selectors with an Aus tour comming up.

Raval has had Aus topur more lesss booked due to Will Young's injury, which is almost a shame for a NZC fan, but look for him to be desperat for runs. The runs from KW, Taylor, and Nicolls have been sparse for NZ of late, with CdG, Watling and Latham having done the bulk of NZ's scoring - so all of those aforementioned should be desperate for a century. 

I have to admit it, I don't like seeing the test team without CdG or Boult (but surely play Ferg over Boult?!).

England: 1 Rory Burns, 2 Dom Sibley, 3 Joe Denly, 4 Joe Root (capt), 5 Ben Stokes, 6 Zak Crawley, 7 Ollie Pope (wk), 8 Sam Curran, 9 Chris Woakes, 10 Jofra Archer, 11 Stuart Broad. New Zealand: 1 Tom Latham, 2 Jeet Raval, 3 Kane Williamson (capt), 4 Ross Taylor, 5 Henry Nicholls, 6 BJ Watling (wk), 7 Daryl Mitchell, 8 Mitchell Santner, 9 Tim Southee, 10 Matt Henry, 11 Neil Wagner.

England are batting to 9. Wow. They really don't trust their top order at all. 5 seamers for England. And 2 part time spinners.

Ironically, England's numbers 9 and 11, have more test centuries than Burns, Sibley, Denley, Crawley, Pope and Curran combined.

Notice England have no main spinner. NZ to bat first. Eng won the toss, and sent us in. NZ have a spinner. Interesting call by Root.

NZ losing the first hour losing 2 wickets. So perhaps England got the toss right. 16m of grass - but this pitch will flatten out to being a road I bet. 

Root has a chance here. Will he get another 50, start looking comfortable and then get out? Seems to be his problem in recent times. Not that 50+ scores are bad in any way, but for someone of his obvious ability there should be more hundreds. Has been under performing for years.

According to Justin Langer the Kiwi wickets have been very flat. 

They've been roads for years and years now. India was last here in 2013 and BMac scored a double and tripple in that series, our pitches have mostly been roads ever since.

They're green and grassy, but the grass doesn't grip. After the first 2 sessions of the match, they're just roads that don't even break up on day 5 and offer anything to spinners. 

A bit like Bellerive offering nothing to spinners.

I'm surprised how you and Mike often discuss the composition of the team, more than the actual state of any current Test, Paddles? 

I'd love to read more about the strengths of specific, current innings by players, or the bowling strategy in  the current Test - that you are so adept at analysing.

Thats prolly because I don't use this website much for current live matches. :P

I use gp forum, and I talk about fielding and bowling tactics there often during the game. 

But you may miss the nuances of my posts being new to cricket like you are. (If you're not new to cricket - I humbly apologies, just the impression I inferred - my bad if not.)

Batting  I discuss less so in tests than limited overs, unless someone is doing something unorthodox or unusual for them personally. This is more common in Asia where someone is fighting the spin. But I recall doing a break down on Henry Nicholls many times. Or why I don't want to see Worker in any form of intl cricket incl tests just recently.

But I love Ricky Ponting's batting analyses - he is remarkable. I'd watch ch7 whenever he is on, and Fox when OKeefe is on for the humour. 

NZ commentators are terrible. We had a brilliant one, especially for bowling analysis, and he got made NSW bowling coach and we lost him.