New Zealand tour of England 2021 News

Leader of the New Zealand bowling attack Trent Boult has said that the series win over England will not make much of a difference in the World Test Championship challenge against India starting next week. However, he said that Blackcaps got the opportunity to get some game time against England. “I don’t think it counts for much. Good preparation, and good for everyone to have a hit out and get some time under their belt. Just really looking forward to this week, can’t wait, and hopefully, we can continue on our good form,” Boult said. Trent Boult missed the first Test of the series against England as he had not travelled with the New Zealand contingent in the IPL 2021 and instead chose to go home to see his family. He joined the squad in London after the UK government allowed him a relaxed quarantine. Tim Southee and Kyle Jamieson shared the new ball in the first Test but New Zealand opted to rest both of them in the second Test to keep them ‘fresh’ for the final against India. However, New Zealand will unleash all of them in one bowling lineup against the Virat Kohli-led side in the final starting June 18 in Southampton.

New Zealand stand-in captain Tom Latham, who has registered his name as one of the very few Blackcaps skipper to have won a series in England, said that the achievement was long time coming and hence it is worth all the celebration form the team. He was mindful of the fact that the Blackcaps have had thier last success in England way back in 1999 and that their previous two attempts had failed although they had rich reserves of talents. "It's a fantastic achievement from the group. I think it's important that we celebrate with each other. It hasn't been done since '99. For us to come here as a group, it was about trying to play our brand of cricket and I thought we did that really well over the four days and got our rewards at the end,” Latham said in the post-match press conference. "It was about trying to do what we do really well and I thought we did. [It's] well documented that '99 was the last time we'd won here and we have been here a couple of times in recent years and haven't quite got the rewards. It's certainly an achievement that's worth celebrating." The series against England was always seen from the prism of the World Test Championship final scheduled within a week time from the second Test albeit the Blackcaps tried all they could to downplay the larger goal. Latham said that the side will take a couple of days before switching their minds over to the game against a ‘completely different’ side in India that posses ‘fantastic’ bowlers and ‘quality’ batsmen in their squad. Not only was he ware of New Zealand’ history in England but he was also mindful of India’s solitary win on their last tour of England that came in Southampton—the venue where the final of the Test Championship will be played, and hence he said that the Blackcaps will have to play their best cricket to defeat Virat Kohli-led Indian team. "They've got a fantastic set of bowlers, [and] a lot of quality batsmen that have scored runs in different conditions all round the world. They were over here a few years ago and played really well, so we know we'll have to play well to beat them. "Our focus will shift to them in a couple of days. The preparation has been great but it's important that we do shift our focus and adapt to a completely different side." New Zealand made as many as six changes keeping in mind the tight schedule on the tour and the big game and the big players such as the skipper Kane Williamson, BJ Watling, Tim Southee and Kyle Jamieson sat out of the second Test in amove that established Blackcap’s eyes on the bigger goal of the World Test Championship. Latham confirmed both Williamson and Watling, who were not fully fit for the second Test are ‘reasonably well’ on track to walk inot the playing XI for the WTC final but also commenced the six replacements such as Matt Henry, Ajaz Patel, Will Young for cashing in on the opportunities which he conceded has been tought to get over a long period fot time. "It was amazing from a personnel change of six guys. That hasn't happened for a long time in this group and it has been a hard team to crack into. For all those guys to get that opportunity - Will Young, Matt Henry, Ajaz Patel - was fantastic. They performed their roles really well,” Latham said. "[Watling and Williamson] are travelling reasonably well. It was important for them to get a little bit of rest in order to be fully fit heading into next week. Fingers crossed we'll have a fully-fit squad." Latham hit the winning runs against England to seal the series win but he has not been at his best with the bat in three of the four completed innings and New Zealand would rely on him to provide the team a good start against India come June 18.

New Zealand displaced India from the top of the ICC Test Rankinsg on the back of a 1-0 series win over the hosts England in a two-match long series concluded today. New Zealand chased down the target with eight wickets in hand and won their first series in England since 1999 and with that went to the top of the pile of the ranking just before they are scheduled to meet India in the World Test Championship final. New Zealand have advanced to the top with 123 rating point which is a two points higher level than 121 points secured by Virat Kohli-led side. In the aftermath of the first loss in a home series since 2014 against Sri Lanka, England slipped to the fourth position with 107 points while their arch-rivals Australia maintained their third position on the table with 108 rating points. For New Zealand, bowlers were the heroes of the victory as they stopped the hosts frpm running away with the game after a good start by the openers on the first day and followed it up another stellar performance to dismantle any chance of their comeback in the second innings with swing and precision of line and length.

England skipper Joe Root has accepted his side was outplyed in all the departments of the game by an impressive New Zealand side in a two-match long series that ended as his first series loss at home. However, he nitpicked ‘poor’ batting by his teammates as the reason behind a week that turned out to be ‘disappointing and frustrating.’ "It's been a frustrating and disappointing performance this week. I don't think we've given a fair account of ourselves. We've been outplayed in all three departments, particularly the batting. We didn't get the runs in the first innings. We missed chances in the field and didn't help our bowlers in that respect. And with the bat we were poor,” Root said. Joe Root pointed out the afternoon session on the third day of the Test when England collapsed and were staring at an innings defeat as one of those session that ‘cost’ teams a Test match and the script was not any different for his side. "Sometimes in Test cricket you can have a poor session with the ball and you're still very much in the game. But a session that like can cost you a Test. That's where we find ourselves. It's cost us the series and we have some hard lessons to learn,” Root added. Root also admitted his personal failure with the bat keeping in his mind the fact that he is the most-experienced and highest-run getter among current England batsman. He conceded his failure to lead from the front which probably had serious consequences on the outlook of the England Test side in the series against New Zealand. "As the leading run-scorer within our squad currently I feel like I've put a lot of pressure on those guys by not performing myself. As a captain you pride yourself on getting big runs and leading from the front and I've not managed to follow through on that. So I've probably compounded that situation slightly,” Root owned up his responsibility. Addressing the issue of batting that has been failing England for a long time now, Root said that the team has to have ‘constructive’ but ‘hard conversations’ with each other over the issues that plagued the team in the redent past before setting their eyes on the future targets. He also extended his confidence on the batsmen saying that all of them have established their credentials as batsmen who can churn out big runs and hence the situation is still far away from the point where all members of the team should hit the panic button. "We have to look at where we can get better individually and collectively. We need to be honest about that. We have to have some hard conversations and move forward. We have to front up, look to get better and learn some hard lessons sometimes," he said. "We've all underperformed this week. "But we have to be constructive. I think every single one of those guys has proven they can score big Test runs. I think it would be the wrong time to start panicking and trying to rip up all the hard work we've done for such a long period of time. It's something that historically we've done going into big tournaments and big Test series and it's made things even worse. Root also dismissed ‘a lot of talk’ around the faulty of techniques of England batsman and asseretd that not all successful players going around in the world bat with similar style and technique. "There's been a lot of talk about technique and batting. My view is batting is very much an individual thing. There's no right or wrong way of doing it. Look at the best players in the world: they all have different methods of how they play. How they stand, their bat paths, where they score their runs. He said batting does not fit well in the binary of ‘right or wrong way’ and instead it is more about mental capacity of an individual. He took his personal refernence once again and urged his teammates to be ‘smarter’ in negating the various aspects of the opponent a bit better than he has been able to do in his career. "For me it's more of a metal thing. It's about clarity in their own game and managing passages of play. Managing different bowlers, different angles and conditions and doing that consistently well over an innings and a series. We can be a little bit smarter on occasions. It's somewhere that throughout my career I've got that horribly wrong on occasions,” Root said. England Test players will have to wait until the first week of August to redeem themselves after the series loss to New Zealand. However, the task is unlikely to be any simpler for them against Virat Kohli-led Indian side that posses quality pacers and spinners capable of challenging them throughout the series.

A clinical display of bowling line and length on the back of strong batting performance has put New Zealand at a touching distance from winning the second Test and the series against England in England, for the first time since 1984. At stumps on day three, England were languishing at nine down for 122 with a lead of just 37 runs—a majority of which came from the bat of Mark Wood, whose batting display must have sent some sort of embarrassment to English batsmen batting above him in the batting order. New Zealand were in a great position to bat the hosts out of the game in the first innings itself but English bowlers showed determination to snatch the momentum from them in the morning session. However, all those missed opportunities have more or less been compensated by an outstanding bowling lineup that never made it look like missing performers as big as Tim Southee and Kyle Jamieson. England conceded a sizeable lead of 85 runs although it once appeared to be far bigger than that. They needed their openers to shine again to combat the new-ball pair of Matt Henry and Trent Boult but it could not have been a more contrasting start. England’s best batsman in the series Rory Burns was tempted into driving at one that wasn’t so full to be driven and was also far away from him even before the hosts could open up their account. Henry did not stop there and found another edge of Dom Sibley bat although the batsman did not play an expansive drive like his partner. The man on pair Zak Crawley got off the mark with a huge reception from the Barmy Army, whose sound could well have given a false signal that all were good and on track for England cricket. However, his innings could not flourish longer than few crisp boundaries and Henry found his pads in front of the stumps to leave England in tatters. The England middle order has been shambolic for so many games starting the series against Sri Lanka and the course correction has not taken place even in home conditions. Ollie Pope came out with aggressive inter once again but the workhorse Neil Wagner, who has also found considerable success with the swinging ball in England, tailed one sharply back towards his pads and the Surrey right-hander was caught napping after being set up by away going deliveries, one after another. The script continued, not only for Wagner but also for the next England batsman Daniel Lawrence, who had the dismissal of Pope playing all over his mind. He was nervous around his off stump and Wagner was smart enough to drag his line a bit straighter to make the case a complicated one for him and eventually getting him edged behind to the keeper. After Lawrence’s departure, England’s hopes were solemnly on the skipper Joe Root’s shoulder and he was not finding it easy to score runs. He struggled for timing and New Zealand bowlers relentless in their discipline to deny him any sort of breathing space. He was joined by James Bracey, who must have walked in with the weight of the world and all the hype surrounding him over his head. He got off the mark in Test cricket in his second game but an eagerness to score off Ajaz Patel saw him walking back to the pavilion with serious helplessness. Patel may not have played this Test had Mitchell Santner not injured his hand in the last Test and he picked up the last thorn in New Zealand’s flesh in the form of Joe Root to establish how poor that decision was in the first Test and would have been in the second one at Edgbaston. With Root gone, England were down and out but the two batsmen Olly Stone and Mark Wood made sure to not make a light work of the case for the Blackcaps. Wood smashed few crisp boundaries and used his admirably against Patel to hit him down the ground and cut him behind point showing the mind of a top-order batsman while playing spin. Earlier, New Zealand almost squandered the great opportunity with the bat but Ross Taylor transformed himself from a man who looked completely out of form to the batsman for what he has been known for in international cricket. Taylor was extremely harsh on short deliveries from Stone and Wood but remained vigilant against his longtime nemesis Stuart Broad. No other batsman except Tom Blundell could utilise the platform set by Will Youn, Taylor and Devon Conway but some useful contributions from the bat lower down the order helped the tourists gain a valuable, tactical lead over England which ultimately proved to be enough for an ill-disciplined England batting line up against the quality of their bowling attack. All seems to be over for England except if the game starts writing its won script and England bowlers could produce a Lord’s 2013 like performance yet again on the fourth day of the Test.

The debate around the soft signal from the on-field umpires has been reignited once again. The debate comes to fore after one of the umpires in the second Test between England and New Zealand, Richard Kettleborough signalled not out to an attempted catch by Zak Crawley off the edge of Devon Conway’s bat. As soon as the umpire signalled it a bumped ball, England vice-captain and the bowler affecting the particular dismissal, Stuart Broad, questioned the decision. The decision was then retained as the third umpire could not find ‘conclusive evidence’ needed to overturn the ‘soft signal' made by the on-field umpires. For a long time now, the logic behind the International Cricket Council’s decision to bring in soft signal provision has been questioned and it is not dying anytime soon. A school of thought suggests that the rule must be amended to allow the third umpire to have full authority to make decisions on the evidence he gathers from slow-motion replays and different angles produced by broadcasting cameras. The question is what exactly is the soft-signal and how does it affect the decision-making process overall? What is a soft signal? The ICC explains the soft signal by putting the onus on the umpires standing in the match. The rule states that, in case the on-field umpires need assistance from their colleague upstairs, they would have to come to a decision themselves (out or not out) and then refer it upstairs for further checking. The thought behind this is that the on-field umpires are best placed to see the action and then make an educated decision when it comes to the 50-50 decisions on the field. The downside of this ruling is that this brings an inherent umpire’s bias into play and unless the third umpire has conclusive evidence to suggest otherwise, the on-field decision is deemed final. ICC's stance “Should both on-field umpires require assistance from the third umpire to make a decision, the bowler’s end umpire shall firstly take a decision on-field after consulting with the striker’s end umpire, before consulting by two-way radio with the third umpire. Such consultation shall be initiated by the bowler’s end umpire to the third umpire by making the shape of a TV screen with his/her hands, followed by a Soft Signal of Out or Not out made with the hands close to the chest at chest height. If the third umpire advises that the replay evidence is inconclusive, the on-field decision communicated at the start of the consultation process shall stand,” says the ICC explaining the protocol that governs the soft signal rule. Problems of soft signal The rule has come under severe scrutiny in the wake of many close calls in the outfield and sometimes also in the slips, like in the ongoing Test between England and New Zealand. The school of thought that is not so sure of the soft signal process and its authenticity demands amendments in the rule. They argue that the on-field umpires cannot see the minute details of close catches in real-time and hence the third umpire, who is equipped with all the modern-day technology should be empowered to make a decision based on evidence and process. MCC's stance The Marylebone Cricket Club, too, had taken cognisance of the controversy surrounding the soft signal and had opined that for catches beyond the limit of the 30-yard circle, on-field umpires should be given an extra option of calling ‘unsighted’ instead of making an ‘explicit’ signal of out or not out. “The committee felt that the soft-signal system worked well for catches within the 30-yard fielding circle, but that catches near the boundary often left the umpires unsighted. It was proposed that, for such catches, the on-field umpires could give an ‘unsighted’ instruction to the TV umpire, rather than the more explicit soft-signal of Out or Not out,” The MCC had said in its statement earlier this year. As per media reports, the ICC was mulling revoking the soft signal provision for the World Test Championship Final between India and New Zealand but fair to say, the rule, like many other rules of the game, has only left common people fazed and searching for logic.