New Zealand V England: Third Men’s Cricket Test, Day Four – Live

Key events

18th over: England 89-2 (Bethell 46, Root 25) Bethell pulls Southee majestically through midwicket for four. Southee doesn’t really have the pace trouble Bethell with the short ball, who is now four away for his third Test fifty.

17th over: England 85-2 (Bethell 42, Root 25) Henry is okay to continue despite ripping a load of skin off his right arm. Root drives expertly for four, then fiddles an edge well short of the cordon. The bounce troubled him again, and with that in mind it’s a bit surprising O’Rourke has only bowled three overs so far.

Mind you, Henry is bowling very well and ends another good over with an LBW shout against Root. Outside the line, probably; inside edge, definitely.

16th over: England 79-2 (Bethell 41, Root 20) Root walks across to flick Southee very fine for two. Good job he did as he’d otherwise have been the subject of a huge LBW shout. The sprawling Henry did well to save the boundary but grazed the skin on his right arm in the process. That looks nasty.

And this isn’t great either: Root has been dropped by Latham at second slip! It was a fairly straightforward two-handed chance to his left after Root was surprised by a bit of extra bounce. “They’ve got the dropsies again!” says Mark Richardson on commentary.

15th over: England 76-2 (Bethell 41, Root 17) Seeya Sachin! Bethell swivel-pulls Henry for six to bring up the fifty partnership. He didn’t fully middle it, and there were loud cries of ‘catch’, but it had enough to clear the short boundary.

Henry fancies his chances, though, and rams in a couple more short balls. Bethell shapes to pull the first before aborting the shot, an exceedingly wise move. THe second clears Latham and runs away for four more byes.

“Kipling’s If adorns the entrance to the centre court at Wimbledon,” writes Krishnamoorthy V. “‘Do not go gently into the night’ must be being lugged around with this English team. A draw may be a win to the likes of Sunil Gavaskar and Geoff Boycott but not to this team.”

Their fear and loathing of the draw is hilarious. There’s been only one in the 35 Tests they’ve played since Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum took over. It took literally two days of Manchester’s finest rain to put a D on the table alongside all the Ws and Ls.

14th over: England 63-2 (Bethell 34, Root 16) Tim Southee replaces Will O’Rourke and is immediately set upon by Bethell. He pulls the first ball over mid-on for four, a mishit stroke that teased the fielder, then goes down on one knee to lace a glorious drive past extra cover. That’s about as good as it gets.

It’s important we don’t get carried away with Bethell. But by heaven it’s hard. Put it this way: Sachin Tendulkar’s record of 15,921 Test runs is under serious threat from one of the England batters out in the middle and it ain’t Joe Root.

13th over: England 54-2 (Bethell 25, Root 16) Bethell tells Matt Henry where to stick his subtle questions by running down the track to smack a drive back over his head for four. The intent was rustic but the shot was played with a smooth elegance.

12th over: England 49-2 (Bethell 20, Root 16) O’Rourke is again hitting 90mph, which turns him from a very awkward bowler into a mildly terrifying one. Even Root is struggling to find the middle of the bat and almost falls when a gloved pull beats the diving Blundell and goes for four.

Meanwhile, this email is spot on. “There’s something about Will O’Rourke’s put-upon demeanour that reminds me of Angus Fraser,” writes Matt Emerson. “Even when he was on a hat-trick he looked like someone had stolen his lunch money. He’s a bit quicker than the great man, mind…”

He’s Fraser x Harmison (2004 version) isn’t he? He has a great hangdog expression as he walks back to his mark.

11th over: England 45-2 (Bethell 20, Root 12) There’s more than one way to interrogate a batter. In the first innings Will O’Rourke pinned Bethell to the wall by the throat until he got the confession he wanted; this morning Matt Henry is using more subtle methods. Bethell is beaten, hit by a nipbacker and then extremely fortunate to see an inside edge flash past the stumps for four.

Weird as it sounds, it’s great to see Bethell struggling to survive. He’ll learn so much more from this innings than the breezy strokefests in the second innings of the first two Tests.

10th over: England 41-2 (Bethell 16, Root 12) Bloody hell that’s a shot and a half. O’Rourke spears in a yorker to Root, pretty much exactly where he wanted it to pitch. Root not only keeps it out but times it whence it came for four.

A bouncer explodes past the leaping Latham for four byes; the over ends with a vague appeal for a catch down the leg side.

9th over: England 33-2 (Bethell 16, Root 8) Bethell half steers, half edges Henry for four. He softened his hands nicely, as he has throughout the series with deliveries like that. The follow-up ball is a beauty that straightens off the seam to hit Bethell on the back leg. Henry pleads for LBW but it was too high. Pitched fractionally outside leg as well.

What a series Bethell has had. I don’t mean his output, good though it has been, so much as his development; the challenge of batting No3 against this New Zealand on these pitches – and in so many different match situations – is worth about two years of education in county cricket. There may be some short-term pain in the next 12 months, as there was with Joe Root in 2013-14, but he’s surely going to score runs in industrial quantities across all formats.

Jacob Bethell of England bats during day four. Photograph: Phil Walter/Getty Images

8th over: England 25-2 (Bethell 9, Root 7) Tim Southee will have to wait his turn. Will O’Rourke, who bowled one nasty over to Bethell last night, picks up where he left off. As a neutral I’m childishly excited about what O’Rourke could achieve in the next decade, so goodness knows how the New Zealand fans feel. I guess the precedent of Kyle Jamieson invites a degree of caution.

Root drives deliberately through backward point for four, either side of awkward defensive shots to repel sharp nipbackers.

7th over: England 21-2 (Bethell 9, Root 3) Joe Root cuts Mat Henry’s first ball for a couple to get off the mark, then squirts a drive only just short of point.

Root has scored 1506 runs in 2024, which puts him eighth on the all-time list. He’s also third after the annus mirabihorribilis in 2021, when Root played like a God and his team kept losing.

Henry ends a good first over by angling one past Bethell’s defensive push from over the wicket.

The players stroll into the Hamilton sunshine, with all eyes on Tim Southee. It’s a gorgeous day, the kind you’d want if you’re going to chase 658.

The latest on Ben Stokes, from ECB Towers

Ben will be further assessed at the end of the Test. If required, he is expected to bat in England’s second innings

Play will start half an hour early, at 9.30pm BST, to make up some of yesterday’s lost time. That extra half hour could be crucial for New Zealand as they push to take these last eight wickets inside two days.

Preamble

This is it, then, the 65th and final day of a bumper year of Test cricket for England’s men’s team. They’ve saved the worst for last with a dismal performance in Hamilton, though we might cut them a bit of slack after such a draining year. England have played 17 Tests, one short of the all-time record, and the players look ready to put on a silly hat, pull some crackers and forget about the challenges of the wobble seam for a bit.

It’s been a mixed year in terms of results, with nine wins and eight defeats after this game. But while there are still plenty of imperfections, England have emphatically achieved their primary objective of 2024: to regenerate the team ahead of a bumper 2025 in which they play a couple of five-Test series against… ah I can’t remember who it is now.

Shoaib Bashir, Gus Atkinson, Jamie Smith, Brydon Carse and Jacob Bethell all made their debuts in 2024 and have all caught the eye to differing degrees. Bashir’s regression is a worry but we shouldn’t lose sight of what he has achieved; had he taken one more wicket yesterday he would have become the second youngest player in Test history to take 50 wickets in a calendar year.

You’ll notice we haven’t discussed the match situation. There’s no point. England will resume on 18 for two, needing 107 sixes to win the game. The main points of interest are how Jacob Bethell fares with another assault from the increasingly scary Will O’Rourke, whether Ben Stokes is fit to bat, whether Ben Stokes bats even if he isn’t fit to bat. And, most importantly, how many wickets the great Tim Southee takes on his final day as a Test player.

He reminded Ben Duckett of a few eternal truths last night, bowling him neck and crop to pick up his 390th Test wicket. Southee, Trent Boult, Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad, who share more than 2,000 Test wickets, have given way to the next lot. (I was going to say ‘next generation’ but as Matt Henry is 33 and Chris Woakes 35, that doesn’t seem right.)

The future of both pace attacks, and of the beloved wobble seam, looks in pretty good hands.

Right, let’s end on a positive note. These are England’s heaviest Test defeats by runs; they currently trail New Zealand by 639. For richer and poorer, this England team do things their way. Don’t go changing, lads.