Test Cricket: After New Zealand gained control of the first LV= Insurance Test on day two at Lord’s, assistant coach Paul Collingwood conceded the side’s ambitions to establish a new era were “a work in progress.”
An unbroken 180-run partnership between Black Caps’ Daryl Mitchell (97no) and Tom Blundell (90no) was worth more than each team’s first-innings total, allowing the tourists to go from 56 to 4 to 236 without losing any more runs.
With a 227-run deficit, England is in danger of starting the Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum era with a loss, extending their winless streak to 18 Tests.
“We understand that things will not change overnight. It will take some time for us to get the team to play the way we want them to. At the end of day two, Collingwood stated, “Obviously, that’s a work in progress.”
“Brendon is a man who sees the world through half-full glasses. He’ll keep his cool; he won’t change his morals or convictions over the course of one inning, and neither will Ben.
“We came out of that first day all evens, both teams got pretty much exactly the same score. It’s disappointing that we haven’t gone ahead and created a big lead, but if you dwell on it for the rest of the game that’s no good. This game’s not out of our reach yet.”
Collingwood, a former England T20 World Cup captain, got hints of encouragement from captain Stokes as he tried to create a breakthrough that never materialised.
“From our point of view, we tried everything, and you can see in Ben that we’ve got a proactive captain who is willing to try different things,” Collingwood added.
The leg-spin of Lancashire’s Matt Parkinson, who was pulled in for his Test debut as a concussion substitute for Jack Leach, who injured himself on the field early on day one, was one of Stokes’ choices.
Parkinson made his long-awaited debut after two years on the outside of the team, but over the course of 14 overs he failed to pose any meaningful threat to Mitchell and Blundell.
With just moderate spin available, the 25-year-old bowled 14 wicketless overs for 43 runs, struggling to force errors from the two set batsmen.
“I’m sure it’s been a big shock for him, he was in his back garden on Thursday afternoon,” Collingwood said.
“He gets a phone call, rushes down to London, receives his cap off Jeetan Patel and goes straight out there. There wasn’t a hell of a lot of assistance out there, but you can see he is a pretty accurate leg-spin bowler and I’m sure he’s delighted with the experience.”
For live cricket news, test cricket, cricket match updates, latest cricket news, live cricket score, all cricket current score, IPL 2022 and other cricket news follow livematchupdatesnews.com.
