If you won a boxing match after your opponent continually punched themselves in the face, how much credit can you take?
England are one-nil up against New Zealand. They played well, deserved it, and have two enormous bright spots in the emergence of Brydon Carse and Jacob Bethell.
But wow, New Zealand were bad. A team famed for their competence, coming off the back of a historic series victory against India, dropped the ball. Eight times.
From a result-based perspective, it is impossible to look beyond this as a key factor in England’s victory. The visitors were 45 for three when Harry Brook arrived at the crease and in trouble. Brook went on to make 171 and was dropped five times along the way. Three of those occasions came before he reached 60. According to statistics company CricViz, which has ball-tracking data going back to 2006, only on one other occasion in the previous 18 years has a player been dropped five times in an innings: Stuart Broad in 2009. The Kiwis were making history again, this time the bad kind.
But you can only beat what’s put in front of you and England cannot be blamed for capitalising on their opponents’ generosity, with Carse, in particular, impressing.
Since breaking into the team two months ago in Pakistan, Carse has been a revelation, his promising performances in Multan and then Rawalpindi followed up with a perfect one here in Christchurch. Ten wickets across the match, he became the first England seamer to achieve the feat in an away Test since Ryan Sidebottom in 2008. Neither James Anderson nor Stuart Broad managed it across 357 Tests between them. Carse did it in three.
For all the headlines that England’s left-field, youth-based selections make – such as Bethell, Shoaib Bashir, Rehan Ahmed or Josh Hull – Carse is arguably the archetypal Ben Stokes/Brendon McCullum pick. Boasting a strong, but not superb, first-class record where his bowling average is 33, his natural attributes see him able to maintain bowling in the high 80s and hammer a “heavy” length. Skills that are gold dust in Test cricket, if not domestic.
England may have settled on Carse recently, but they have fancied him for a long time. He made his ODI debut in 2021, was a Covid reserve for the 2021-22 Ashes series and is a regular on England Lions trips. When he made his T20 debut last year, he averaged 42 in the format with an economy rate of nine. But England didn’t care, they loved him anyway.
“He’s turned out to be the cricketer I always thought he could be,” his England captain and Durham teammate Stokes said after the match.
“To have someone in your attack who can almost be three bowlers in one is massive. I use him as the enforcer when we go to the short-pitched stuff, but he’s also taken a lot of wickets this week as well and his economy rate has been below three.”
Earlier this year Carse served a three-month ban for historic gambling offences. At a time when he could have been emerging for England with the retirement of James Anderson, he was sat on the sofa not allowed to play.
Instead, Gus Atkinson got the nod and was superb. There was a chance that Carse’s opportunity had gone but less than a week after his ban was over, England named him in their white-ball squad to play Australia.
“Ben [Stokes] was one of the first people I spoke to [after my ban],” Carse said of the support he has received from his long-time friend. “Over the past four or five months he’s been there, in person or over the phone and I cannot thank him enough.”
Carse wasn’t the only good news to come out of the eight-wicket win at Christchurch. Bethell’s selection at No 3 was arguably the most startling of the Stokes/McCullum era, with the 21-year-old having never made a professional century nor batted at No 3 in his career.
But, chasing 104 to win, he made 50 not out off just 37 deliveries. At one stage, he struck four boundaries off one Nathan Smith over. He looks the part, and England will argue that’s because he is.
“That’s just another little glimpse of the talent and skill he has,” Stokes said of England’s new toy. “That knock today was pretty special to watch.”
Bethell has given England a problem. They won’t want to drop him, but their regular No 3 Ollie Pope had dropped down to No 6 to stand in as wicketkeeper. Durham’s Ollie Robinson has arrived in the country as keeping cover but a Test debut for him could be postponed, with the temptation there for England to stick to the same makeshift team they picked this week.
“We found ourselves a problem when we got to this first Test match and we fixed it pretty quickly,” Stokes said of the situation. “That was the makeup of the team for this game and we’ll see in Wellington.”
The next Test starts on Friday, where a win will secure England’s first series win in New Zealand since 2008.
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