Ben Stokes encouraged his England side to feel “thankful” for their involvement in an instant classic of a Test match at Basin Reserve, rather than dwell on the disappointment of a gut-wrenching one-run defeat to New Zealand.
Only one other side in the long history of Test cricket have come as close to a successful fourth-innings chase and lost, Allan Border’s Australia beaten by the West Indies by the same result in 1993, but Stokes refused to be downcast.
