Battling England hang on by their fingernails

A combination of Matt Prior’s ton, dogged resistance and good fortune saves the series

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26 March 2013

England dramatically saved the Third Test and the series against New Zealand here today. They needed to negotiate 19 nerve-shredding balls with nine wickets down in their second innings to ensure a draw which had seemed probable and improbable by turn.

It took a combination of obduracy, skill, the umpire review system and plain old luck to hold out for 90 thrilling overs on the last day. The hero of the match for the tourists, as he has been the hero of the series, was their vice-captain, Matt Prior, who made his seventh Test hundred.

Prior batted for four and a half hours, faced 182 balls, curbing but not denying his natural instincts and making everything of the breaks that came his way. For much of the final, fraught session he was joined by Stuart Broad who could hardly have been more resolute. It took him 62 balls to score his first run.

But with 23 balls left, Broad edged a catch to slip off the part-time off -spin of Kane Williamson. Two balls later Jimmy Anderson performed a replica of the shot and in came Monty Panesar. By now it seemed an unequal contest.

Somehow Prior managed to face enough of the bowling and although there was one farcical incident when Panesar, dashing for a single off the second ball he faced, effected his dive for the line too early, it was Prior who finally faced the last three balls of the Test.

He raised his arms to the sky as Panesar rushed to embrace him. Although it was an innings that deserved the reward it brought there was no contradicting the truth that England had been largely outplayed.

It was not quite a lone hand. Earlier on a last day that was quite unputdownable, Ian Bell faced 271 balls in making 75, mostly a model of probity, but one of two men dropped in a pulsating last over before lunch. When he was eventually caught at slip on the stroke of tea, the game looked up for England.

Nothing in this valiant rearguard action could disguise the deficiencies in approach that took England to the brink. When the series began three weeks ago, they were overwhelming favourites, the No2 ranked side in the world expected to do much as they liked against the No8.

It never looked like there was such a gap. New Zealand had much the better of the opening Test and if England replied accordingly in the Second, which was also curtailed by rain, the Kiwis dominated the deciding match.

The fifth day was spine-tingling in a way that only Test cricket can be. The whole of New Zealand appeared to be on tenterhooks, waiting for wickets to fall. If it was not quite like the tension that coursed through the nation on the occasion of the Rugby World Cup Final, it was perhaps the day which signalled the renaissance of the long form of the game in the country.

England began at 90 for four, 380 runs behind. The first task was to bat through to lunch without loss. They did not quite make it. The new ball was always likely to be influential, although not quite so immediately as it turned out. With its first delivery, Trent Boult produced a searing late in-swinger which Root missed on the forward prop. Maybe Root could have legislated for it but it was the very definition of being bang on the money.

Another wicket then and the magnitude of England’s task would have multiplied to infinity. In the last over before lunch the admirable Boult found the edge of Bell’s oustretched bat only for Dean Brownlie to shell a sharp chance low at fourth slip. Two balls later, Jonny Bairstow escaped when he poked a full-length delivery to gully where Kane Williamson could not hold on.

Bairstow, however, never looked remotely settled. It was entirely foreseeable when he edged Tim Southee to first slip, where Ross Taylor took the catch at waist height. It left England at 159 for six and back in the mire.

Fortunately for them, the man striding purposefully to the crease was Prior. It was difficult to be sure beneath his helmet and his beard but his jaw was almost certainly jutting.

He was businesslike from the start but still needed some luck and good old-fashioned justice, which was meted out with the aid of technology. Prior had scored 16 when he was given out leg before but, on review, it could be seen the ball took an inside edge. He narrowly escaped on 20 when he top-edged a pull high to mid-wicket and, on 28, he fended off a bouncer which slid down the stumps but did not dislodge the bails.

Broad, too, needed a review to grant him a reprieve when he was on nought, which he was for an eternity. His contribution to a half-century stand was zero. It mattered not. New Zealand may have deserved victory but England held out when it mattered most.

Battling England hang on by their fingernails

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