It was an innings that was as charmed as it was calculated and powerful, the product of four chances going down on a day when the usually reliable New Zealanders grassed six overall. Not that Harry Brook, unbeaten on 132 at stumps and having hauled England back into the first Test, had any reason to apologise.
As Joe Root pointed out before this series – and then went on to demonstrate with a fourth-ball duck before lunch – batting is a pursuit where the failures outnumber the good times. Brook may have cashed in on some profligacy – lives handed to him on 18, 41, 70 and 106 – but all that mattered was England’s 319 for five in reply to New Zealand’s 348 all out; a far healthier score than their earlier 71 for four after lunch.
