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Key events
Yet another fifty to Malan!
16th over: England 81-1 (Malan 50, Root 15) Jamieson was just changing ends – still a bit of a surprise as he had started so well and Lord’s, with its slope, is a harder place to change ends than most. Malan, still rather wary of him, pushes a single to reach fifty for the third time out of three in this series: 50 off 50 balls. He’s had some luck – two play-and-misses in this over, on top of some nicks – but he has put away the bad ball very decisively. And that’s drinks, with England doing pretty well given Root’s struggles.
15th over: England 79-1 (Malan 49, Root 14) What could possibly get Root into some kind of form? Some spin, perhaps … Latham puzzles the commentators by taking Jamieson off (2-1-3-0) and turning to Rachin Ravindra’s slow left-arm. Root celebrates by pulling his first ball for four. The fifty partnership comes up off 59 balls. Root has only about a quarter of those runs, but he’s still there and he’ll probably get a hundred.
Root dropped again!
14th over: England 71-1 (Malan 46, Root 9) Root nudges to leg for a single. A Sky caption shows that this is his highest score in the series, following scores of 6, 0 and 4. And now, facing Lister, he’s dropped again. You could make it up, but nobody would believe you. It’s a nick to wide slip again, and it’s spilt by by Tim Southee. He too goes off the field with a finger injury. You wait ages for a slip to hurt himself taking or missing a catch, and then three come along at once.
13th over: England 62-1 (Malan 39, Root 7) Jamieson to Malan, and it’s a maiden. I don’t know what’s going off out there.
12th over: England 62-1 (Malan 39, Root 7) Lister continues and has Root dropped! He was trying a late cut, a shot he can usually play in his sleep. Perhaps surprised by the bounce, he steers it to the one, wide slip, Finn Allen, who goes with one hand and spills it. And joins Mitchell in the treatment room.
Root now has seven off 21 balls. Is he playing his way out of the World Cup squad?
11th over: England 59-1 (Malan 37, Root 6) Matt Henry takes a break after an exemplary opening spell of 5-0-17-1 and hands over to Kyle Jamieson. He’s been expensive in this series, as he makes his way back from injury, but he starts well now and Root can only pick up a two with a slash past backward point.
Here’s John Starbuck, picking up on Matt Doherty’s line from the 4th over. “I know we speak of Daddy Hundreds,” John says, “following Gooch’s coining of the phrase, but when Nat Sciver-Brunt gets going again, will she score a Mummy Hundred?” Good question! Her 120 yesterday, the fastest ever for England’s women, was the mother and father of ODI hundreds.
10th over: England 56-1 (Malan 36, Root 4) After that big over, Southee is replaced by Ben Lister. His left-arm angle colludes with the slope to send the ball across Root, who tries to send it back where it came from and only succeeds in getting a nick, just wide of slip. Malan gets a nick too, but it’s a thick inside edge that goes for four. One of these batters is in form and in luck, and the other is not. The Powerplay ends with England perhaps narrowly ahead, because of losing just the one wicket, though it could easily have been more.
9th over: England 48-1 (Malan 30, Root 2) Breaking news from the England camp: Joe Root has made a run! He plays the shot he tried first ball – down the track, whipping to leg – and gets a single for it. But then he misses another ramp. He recovers to pick up another single with a leg glance. Baby steps.
8th over: England 45-1 (Malan 29, Root 0) Someone needs to get England going again, and Malan gets the message. Facing Southee, he hits a square force, a flick-pull and a rasping cover drive … three fours in a row! He has raced to 29 from 25 balls.
Bad news for NZ: Daryl Mitchell dislocated a finger taking that catch to get rid of Jonny Bairstow. Hope he’s able to bat.
7th over: England 33-1 (Malan 17, Root 0) Root gets five balls to face, but it doesn’t help. Henry is still on the spot and Root isn’t too hard to tie down at the moment. Frustrated, he tries his new favourite shot, the ramp, and misses that. There’s a big appeal as the ball hits something and goes through to Tom Latham, but the umpire reckons it was pad and he’s right. Root has none off seven.
6th over: England 32-1 (Malan 16, Root 0) Southee very nearly gets Malan LBW with one that swings into him, but he’s saved by the slope as the ball does too much. And he may have got a nick as well… Root, again left with just one ball to face, manages to get bat on it this time – the toe of the bat. It’s fascinating to see such a fluent player out of form.
5th over: England 28-1 (Malan 13, Root 0) So here comes Joe Root, England’s senior batter – and, lately, their weakest link. He has made precisely ten runs in this series. He goes straight on the attack, taking a step forward to whip to leg, but not actually managing to hit the ball. Well bowled, Matt Henry (3-0-13-1).
WICKET! Bairstow c Mitchell b Henry 13 (England 28-1)
After all those quirky nicks, Bairstow falls to a standard one. Henry’s accuracy bears fruit as Dary Mitchell takes a sharp low catch. It has to be checked by the third umpire but it’s clean.
4th over: England 26-0 (Bairstow 12, Malan 12) At last, a ball on the pads, from Southee to Malan: two leg-byes. And another: four runs, clipped away to the Tavern. Before that, there was another big loopy edge from Bairstow, who seems to be determined to get caught somewhere between cover and deep third.
An email! “What are the chances,” wonders Matt Doherty, “of Harry Brook scoring a daddy hundred?” I suspect you’re right – quite high… although he is an all-or-nothing merchant, and just lately he’s gone from all to nothing. Still, in my book, well worth a place on the plane to the World Cup.
3rd over: England 19-0 (Bairstow 11, Malan 8) Another loose shot from Bairstow, another two runs for it. He wafts at Henry, taking his bottom hand off the bat and snicking over backward point. Again, he locates the middle of the bat afterwards, adding a two and a single. The bowlers haven’t strayed onto the pads once, and they’ve still gone for a run a ball. “This looks a very, very good pitch,” Kumar Sangakkara said a few minutes ago. And he should know: he’s an ex-president of MCC.
2nd over: England 14-0 (Bairstow 6, Malan 8) From the Nursery End, it’s Tim Southee. Dawid Malan shows what good touch he’s in by going down the track and cover-driving for four on the up. He leaves the next ball, then eases the one after for four more, to cover’s right. Has Malan forgotten that he’s supposed to be a slow starter?
1st over: England 6-0 (Bairstow 6, Malan 0) Jonny Bairstow was out to the first ball of Wednesday’s game and he very nearly does it again! Matt Henry finds enough away swing to draw a leading edge, which loops up just high enough to elude the man in the ring at cover. They run two and Bairstow finds the middle of the bat next ball, with a crisp off drive.
The English summer has officially lost the plot. We used to be able to depend on it to deliver grey skies, drizzle, and a steady temperature of 16C/61F. This year we had a heatwave in June, a monsoon in July, a mixed bag in August and another heatwave in September, which continues today. The sky is blue, the air is warm, the summer dresses are on, and there may even be the odd MCC member with his jacket off.
Stokes not doing enough to secure his place. Tough, but you have to maintain standards
— Rick Burin (@rickburin) September 15, 2023
Teams in full: both
England 1 Jonny Bairstow, 2 Dawid Malan, 3 Joe Root, 4 Harry Brook, 5 Jos Buttler (capt, wkt), 6 Moeen Ali, 7 Liam Livingstone, 8 Sam Curran, 9 David Willey, 10 Brydon Carse, 11 Reece Topley.
New Zealand 1 Will Young, 2 Devon Conway, 3 Henry Nicholls, 4 Daryl Mitchell, 5 Tom Latham (capt, wkt), 6 Glenn Phillips, 7 Rachin Ravindra, 8 Kyle Jamieson, 9 Matt Henry, 10 Tim Southee, 11 Ben Lister.
Teams in brief: NZ
The crowd also miss out on New Zealand’s star player in this series, Trent Boult. Rotation, rotation. He gives way to his old mate Tim Southee, and Lockie Ferguson is replaced by Matt Henry.
Teams in brief: England
Stokes dropped! Buttler leaves out the two stars of the win at The Oval, Stokes and Woakes, as well as Gus Atkinson. Frustrating for the crowd, but they’re all rotated out. In come Harry Brook, David Willey and Brydon Carse. Still no Jason Roy.
Toss: England win and bat
Jos Buttler wins the toss and feels like batting first, which went reasonably well on Wednesday.
Preamble
Morning everyone and welcome to the OBO. It’s England v New Zealand. It’s a 50-over game. It’s Lord’s. Just call it a tie now … although these two forward-thinking sides have found a new way not be separated. Instead of tying a match, or a so-called tie-breaker, they now take turns to win easily, and end up tying the series instead.
The T20 series finished 2-2, and so will this ODI series if New Zealand can dig deep and win today. That is one very plausible scenario. Another is that Jos Buttler’s England, so commanding at Southampton and The Oval, carry that momentum a few miles further north.
On Wednesday Ben Stokes bagged the headlines with his monumental 182, but the bowling was top-class too. Bereft of Jofra Archer, Mark Wood and Adil Rashid, an attack led by the great Chris Woakes still had enough variety to complete a crushing win – two left-armers, two spinners, one enforcer and one ideal son-in-law.
Crushing, except that these New Zealanders are too cool and calm to be crushed. Two games into the T20 series, they were on the ropes, yet they bounced back with two big victories. They have the bowler of this series in Trent Boult plus a battery of pacemen, a strong hand of spinners and a powerful batting order. And even this level-headed bunch may be a little fired up by the thought of letting England lift another trophy at Lord’s.
It’s a lunchtime start, 12.30pm BST, which means that if there’s a dramatic final act, people will be back from school or work in time to enjoy it. I’ll be back around 12.05 with the toss and the teams.
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