Before the start of this deciding third Test against New Zealand, Brendon McCullum was overheard saying he was set to learn a fair bit about his England team.
After a Lord’s surface that featured seamers fishing with dynamite and then the semi-skimmed XI chosen for the Oval, no one quite knew whether a flat pitch such as Trent Bridge’s would rekindle the aggressive batting of the previous four years, or if a winter of mixed messages from up top had fully stifled those instincts.
