England
can take hope for the future from their tour of New Zealand - despite the
disappointing performances.
Even the New Zealanders
wouldn’t have expected to get a draw in the test series against England - a
team placed six places higher than them in the ICC test rankings. Even more
unexpected was that they would outplay their visitors in two of the three
tests, bowling out the tourists for less than 200 on two occasions, and had it
not been for heroic knocks from Matt Prior and Ian Bell they would have recorded
an unlikely series win.
England went to New
Zealand on the back of a test series win in India, the first time they had achieved
this feat for 27 years. New Zealand had just been beaten heavily by South
Africa, losing by an innings twice in a two-match series. So surely the scraped
draw against the Kiwis should be a worrying result for England in the build-up
to the Ashes later this year?
Perhaps not. A wake-up
call or reality-check if you like, but England’s tour of India had clearly
taken its toll on the player’s concentration and energy. The fast bowlers
noticeably tired quickly and were unable to run in with the amount of
aggression needed to put batsmen under concerted pressure. It’s of no surprise that
Stuart Broad, who missed the series in India through injury, was perhaps
England’s best and most consistent performer with the ball. And England were
missing the ICC’s eleventh best test batsman in the world in Kevin Pieterson
and the eighth best bowler in Graeme Swann. There were many times in the series
when Alastair Cook must have wished he could have thrown the ball to Swann, who
has that knack of getting a key wicket in his first over. In the absence of
these key players, England looked to youth, and the experience gained by Joe
Root and Jonny Bairstow will be of great benefit to them and their team in the
long-run.
So in many ways England
can take heart from their battling draws. The spirit of the rear-guard defiance
shown against Australia at Cardiff in 2009 and South Africa at Cape Town in
2010 raised its obstinate head again. Matt Prior playing a Collingwood-esc
innings to cement himself in the ICC’s top 10 test batsmen. England still have
a great team spirit, probably even more so since Cook’s accession to the
captaincy, and that will have been strengthened by their stubbornness in the
last innings of the test series with New Zealand. One thing is for sure, England
will be big favourites in the upcoming Ashes series, with Australia in disarray
after a thrashing at the hands of a far superior India. The dogged draws in
2009 and 2010 were key stepping stones when England trod the path to test match
supremacy - maybe this gritty 0-0 could lay the foundations for another climb
to the top of world cricket.
