That's called a reality check. 

Now, many of you would see it as the type of reality check where it's 'back to reality with our Black Caps' but that's really, really dumb. Don't do that.

It's more of a 'England are pretty good and we've still got a wee way to go' reality check.

We went into day five needing a few wickets, which we got and then needed to either score a bunch of runs really quickly, or not get out. My Day Five Mission Objective was "don't suffer defeat". There were two options, two lives, a back up plan and as Test cricket has a way of doing, the game was flipped on its head with England's strike bowlers picking up both Martin Guptill and Tom Latham very early on. 

The truth of the matter is that we weren't quite good enough. England's bowlers attacked as a group, each bowler did their bit for the team with someone like Stuart Broad bowling at his hostile best and then you throw Ben Stokes up and he performs like a man possessed.

In very general terms, our batsmen looked a bit confused with the situation of the game and weren't good enough at defending England's best deliveries. The early wickets obviously play a major role in that, they scrambled everything and all of a sudden we've got a struggling Ross Taylor at the crease.

The fight back from Corey Anderson and BJ Watling was nice, but it wasn't enough. 

Our tail doesn't strike you as the sort of tail who you would back to put together a super gutsy effort to save a Test either. 

I need to sleep on this for a few days, but don't overreact. This is far from the end of the world as England played very well when the game was on the line. I see a few people commenting on day one when England were under the pump, but day one means sweet fuck all. England won the game with key performances on days four and five, key performances from guys like Alistair Cook and Broad who have been there and done that before.  

All we can ask from the Black Caps is to live and learn. There are many aspects of this game that will live with various players for a while, plenty of lessons to ponder and a few technical issues to sort out as well. The Black Caps are so far from the finished product, but we're on a path to that and we haven't really seen this group play a Test like this one on foreign soil where the home team is fired up with plenty to prove. Tick that one off. 

Most importantly, I think we all need to look forwards. The players will head to Leeds today or tomorrow and they'll be eyeing up a win in the second Test to tie the series up.

We got beaten by a better team, now we've got to rise to that level.