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Yes, it's windy
As the New Zealanders sing their anthem, they are looking a little ruffled – by the wind, which the Basin Reserve is famous for. Those trousers are billowing.
The players are out there ...
… and so is the sun! As God Save the King rings out.
Meanwhile the Man United game has ended. Permission to join Scott Murray.
Very 19th-century
Teams: England
As advertised. But how will they go on a greentop?
England 1 Zak Crawley, 2 Ben Duckett, 3 Ollie Pope, 4 Joe Root, 5 Harry Brook, 6 Ben Stokes (capt), 7 Ben Foakes (wkt), 8 Ollie Robinson, 9 Stuart Broad, 10 Jack Leach, 11 Jimmy Anderson.
Teams: NZ
Last week’s debutants, Kuggeleijn and Tickner, drop out. Matt Henry comes in as expected and Will Young joins him to stiffen the batting.
New Zealand 1 Tom Latham, 2 Devon Conway, 3 Will Young, 4 Kane Williamson, 5 Henry Nicholls, 6 Daryl Mitchell, 7 Tom Blundell (wkt), 8 Michael Bracewell, 9 Tim Southee (capt), 10 Neil Wagner, 11 Matt Henry.
Toss: NZ win and bowl
Well, you would, wouldn’t you? And Tim Southee does.
Pitch: yes, it's green
David Gower introduces us to the pitch, which is as green as we should all be these days. And, for now, it’s not raining.
Preamble
Hello and welcome to the final match of England’s tour of New Zealand. Not that long ago, tours were a marathon – in 1974-75, England’s two Tests in NZ were tacked on the end of a gruelling six-Test series in Australia, as arranged by administrators who evidently hadn’t heard that a father might have a part to play in family life.
Nowadays most tours are a sprint. A two-Test series is still a terrible idea, because neither side can come from behind to win it. But at least with these protagonists, both bearing the imprint of Brendon McCullum, we know that the contest will be very watchable while it lasts.
For New Zealand, there is a series to square and a score to settle after four successive defeats to Ben Stokes’s brave new England. They will have Matt Henry back from paternity leave (what would those 1970s administrators have made of that?). He is expected to share the new ball with Tim Southee, allowing Neil Wagner to return his customary role as the one dishing out the punishment rather than taking it.
For England, there is momentum to be maintained. And as Chris Rogers tells Daniel Gallan in this illuminating look at Stuart Broad’s hot spells, “momentum is real”. After six Test wins in a row, another one would put Stokes on a par with Michael Vaughan, who won seven in the home season of 2004. It would also give Stokes a pair of whitewashes: his third in a Test series (following NZ last summer and Pakistan in the autumn), and the first whole-winter clean-sweep ever by an England captain with more than three Tests on his plate.
There is some rain around the Basin Reserve, so it’s just conceivable that Stokes will have to settle for the first draw of his regime. Should that happen, his record for the winter – won four, drawn one – will be the best by an England captain playing more than three Tests since JHWT Douglas did something similar in South Africa, just before the First World War. Douglas, fondly known as Johnny Won’t Hit Today, had an unfair advantage in the great SF Barnes, then aged 39 and still sending down medium-fast cutters that could move either way. In his final series, Barnes took 49 wickets at an average of 11 in four Tests and boycotted the fifth after a difference of opinion with the management. His 150th anniversary is now approaching, to be celebrated in the 2023 Wisden.
Stokes has an unfair advantage too in James Anderson, who should surely be known as Jimmy Won’t Miss Today. He’s just returned to the top of the world rankings at the ridiculous age of 40. The word was that he was a bit sore after his exertions at Mount Maunganui, which brought his second-best match haul in 77 overseas Tests (seven for 54). You suspect that no amount of soreness, nor even a difference of opinion with the management, would stop him having a bowl on the green green grass of Wellington.
It’s a day game, for a change, played with a red ball. Play starts at 11am local time, 10pm GMT, and I’ll be back about 25 minutes before that with news of the toss, assuming it hasn’t been delayed.
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