Basking In Some Stats & Records From The Blackcaps’ One-Run Win Over England
People who don’t like Test cricket will often say things like: how can you play for five full days and still end up with a draw? The answer to that is because sometimes, very rarely, perhaps only once in a lifetime, you might end up with a finish such as we witnessed at the Basin Reserve on Tuesday 28 February 2023 between New Zealand and England.
The entire game was unhinged. The Blackcaps won the toss and chose to bowl first. They’d been given a thorough pantsing at Mount Maunganui in the first match, but Matt Henry was back for this one so at least they had two new ball bowlers this time. And, tell ya what, at this stage things were looking pretty sweet...
Next thing you knew the Yorkshire jerries Joe Root and Harry Brook had put on 302 runs for the fourth wicket. So much for that dream. Brook was eventually dismissed for 186. Root was unbeaten on 153 when Ben Stokes gave a generous declaration at 435/8. Apart from the two big centurions, nobody else got to 30. Not that it mattered. Particularly not when James Anderson proceeded to take the top off the NZ order with Devon Conway, Kane Williamson, and Will Young all caught behind off his bowling for single-digits.
Now the Blackcaps were 21/3 just as England had been. Except there was no triple-hundy partnership on the way. Nope, the Cappies were lingering at 103/7 when captain Tim Southee strolled to the crease and thumped a bunch of sixes on his way to 73 off 49 (strike-rate of 148.97).
Southee was out one strike shy of catching his high score of 77 which was achieved against England all the way back on Test debut. He hit nine sixes in that innings. He his six in this one. Ben Stokes surpassed Brendon McCullum’s record for the most sixes in Test matches in the previous game – Stokes has 109, Baz had 107. Tim Southee now has 82 which ties him for tenth in recorded history alongside Andrew Flintoff and Matthew Hayden. The list itself is absolutely hilarious because it’s this veritable selection of some of the greatest batsmen to ever wield the willow... and Tim Southee.
Anyway, that excellent Southee knock threatened to take the lads past the follow-on mark. Then Stuart Broad came back into the attack and Southee suddenly abandoned all hope of defence and slugged until he got out. New Zealand lost their last three wickets for eight runs and England were happy to send them straight back in to bat again with a lead of 226 runs.
However the Blackcaps top order stepped up at the second time of asking. Tom Latham and Devon Conway put on 149 for the opening stand showing great patience and determination. Conway left for 61 but then in came Kane Williamson. Five of the top seven passed fifty. Latham went for 83. Daryl Mitchell hit a run-a-ball 54. Tom Blundell settled in long term with Williamson as that pair added 158 for the sixth wicket. Finally Williamson was out in the unlikeliest of ways: caught behind down leg side from the part-time medium pacers of Harry Brook.
The lead was now well in excess of 200 runs and nearing a very competitive target. Alas, there followed another twist in the tale when Michael Bracewell ran himself out forgetting to ground his bat then Southee and Henry hoofed their wickets away before Blundell was out for 90 trying to slog his way to a ton before he ran out of partners. The last five wickets fell for 28 runs. England required 258 to win, quickly knocking off 48 of those in the final session of day four – albeit for the loss of one wicket as Tim Southee served up a peach to Zak Crawley, clipping his off stump.
Day five brought free entry status for fans, a nice touch from NZ Cricket and the Basin Reserve. That, along with the presence of the Barmy Army, meant the banks were very densely populated for D-Day and those that turned up were rewarded with an unforgettable treat.
First the nightwatchman Ollie Robinson was dismissed going for a heave, as you do. Southee got him. Then Matt Henry had Ben Duckett caught behind. Yeah there we go, great start to the day’s play. Even better when Neil Wagner came on and picked up Ollie Pope before, inexplicably, Harry Brook was run out without facing a ball. Complete shambles between he and Joe Root, perhaps forgetting the keeper was standing up to the stumps (meaning that Bracewell didn’t have to throw down the poles, he had Blundell there to sweep up anything in the vicinity – as he dutifully did). England were 80/5. They still required another 178 tuns for victory. That target was suddenly looking a long way away.
Problem was, Joe Root and Ben Stokes were at the crease. Root must’ve been feeling guilty about the run out because he began smacking the ball to all parts... while Stokes took things calmly at the other end. The English captain was soon even more cautious after he aggravated his ongoing knee injury. Still, the pair plodded onwards with determination. It was a masterclass from Root as he neared another wonderful hundred. They took the score past 200. And then... drama.
What happened was Ben Stokes saw Neil Wagner return to the attack and decided that it was time to get this thing over and done with. Wagner had been savaged in the previous game, bowling 29.2 total overs for figures of 6/192 at a run-rate of 6.54 per over. The eyes of Stokes lit up with the promise of boundaries. Unfortunately his bung knee couldn’t handle it and as he tried to swivel through an aggressive pull shot that cramped him up just a little more than he’d expected the ball looped up kindly for the breakthrough wicket. Incredibly, Joe Root was also out attacking Wagner only one run later. Stokes gone for 33. Root for 95. At 202/7 this thing had swung back in favour of the hosts again.
But Ben Foakes knew what he was doing, the English keeper coping with Stuart Broad’s quick dismissal (although Broad did score 11 off 9, useful runs) by farming strike off Jack Leach and periodically crunching one to the fence. It was difficult work and not without risk but he took things all the way down inside the last ten runs... before Tim Southee got him caught on the hook shot. More see-sawing chaos.
In came James Anderson. Seven runs to win. One wicket remaining. Anderson saw off the rest of Southee’s over. Neil Wagner carried on with the next set. Leach played and missed. Leach left a couple down leg side. Leach took a swipe at a shorter one but the ball dropped too far away for the keeper to reach and not far enough for deep third-man to reach. One more run scored. Wagner then gave Anderson a ruthless shortie right into the armpit but Ando fended it off gracefully. Then he charged down the wicket and punched a four in front of midwicket to bring England within two runs of the win.
Southee bowled a maiden to Leach. There was one nudge into the leg side which required some sharp Matt Henry fielding to prevent a run. Otherwise Leach didn’t seem too willing to chase anything. He ducked under the last ball to leave Jimmy the strike. Wagner’s first ball went wide down leg, though not wide enough to be called a wide despite protests from the batsman. Hey, it’s a Test match after all.
The next ball was also down leg... but Anderson had a fiddle and it glanced off the face of his bat. Any decent contact and it was hooning towards the fine leg boundary for the win. Any less and he’d have missed it entirely. But he didn’t miss it. Neither did Tom Blundell with the tidy low catch. Scenes ensued. The Blackcaps won by a single run.
Had to give it the full recap for the sake of posterity. Some joker might need to refer to this article someday when writing a book about the greatest games of cricket ever played. But the real reason we’re here is to deliver some numbers. To churn through the stats and the records following that incredible Test match. Thus without any further hesitation, let’s do exactly that.
Winning After Following-On
The tactical wisdom of enforcing the follow-on is something of a talking point these days, though regardless of whether or not Ben Stokes was right to do so there’s a very important point to remember: anytime the follow-on is a consideration, it means your first innings lead is 200+ runs. That’s a lot of runs. It means that one team has been bowled out for a massive deficit and now faces the prospect of an innings defeat if they can’t step things up.
Needless to say, those teams very rarely win. How rarely does it happen? Try four times in 2494 Test matches across the entire historical span of this beautiful sport. And that’s including this one...
To get more specific, there have been 296 instances of a follow-on being enforced. Of those games, 232 were won by the team that enforced it (that’s 78.38%), 60 were drawn (20.27%), and then you’ve got the cheeky four that flipped around (1.35%). The follow-on is no guarantee of a win, one in five such games end without a victor at all, but it’s pretty bloody hard to lose from that position.
Meanwhile, curiously enough, there have been 111 instances of the follow-on being available but not taken. That’s led to 96 wins (86.49%), 13 draws (11.71%), and 2 defeats (1.80%). And one of those two losses was a rain-affected game between South Africa and England in 2000 where they both declared the middle innings at 0/0 to chase a result – which happened as England scored 251/8 on the final day (after days 2-4 were all rained off). So it doesn’t even really count.
The Blackcaps scored 483 in the third innings to give themselves a hope. That alone is the team’s seventh highest third innings total ever. The first? That was another memorable one at the Basin Reserve, against India in 2014, when current England coach Brendon McCullum scored an NZ record 302 within a total of 680/8d.
Of the four instances of winning despite following-on, the Blackcaps this week did have the lowest first innings deficit. Only by one run below the 1981 game at Headingley but still. On the flipside, England’s fourth innings score of 256 is also the highest of any of those losing efforts. Makes sense that this’d be the case but three of those four games were incredibly close: England won by 10 runs in 1894 and by 18 runs in 1981. Both against Australia lol. Then this 1-run effort from the kiwis.
Yet the other instance was somehow an absolute hiding. That famous game at Eden Gardens in 2001 where Aussie scored 445 on the back of a Steve Waugh hundy then skittled India for a mere 171. Follow-on enforced... and then VVS Laxman scored 281 with Rahul Dravid also getting a big ton, the pair of them adding 376 runs for the fifth wicket as India ended up declaring (after following-on!) for 657/7. Harbajhan Singh then took 6/73 in the fourth innings. Aussie done for 212 chasing 384. Never even got close.
That match was a bit of a turning point for Australian cricket tactics. Up to and including that game, they’d enforced the follow-on 88% of the time. Since then they’ve only done so 36% of the time. A clear line in the sand. Note that all three previous instances of winning after the F/O came against Aussie so they’ve been exposed to this reality more than most. In their history they’re 31-1-0 (W-D-L) when being in a position to enforce it but not doing so and are 41-8-3 when they tell the other team to pad straight back up again.
As for the Blackcaps, we’re talking about 42 instances of having to follow-on leading to 32 defeats, 9 draws, and now one glorious win. When the shoe is on the other foot, the Caps have a 15-4-0 record when asking a team to F/O (read that phrase how you will), and a 4-1-0 record when declining the option.
Basically whenever you’re in a position to make that call, you’re way ahead of the game and probably going to win regardless. But batting again does almost entirely eliminate the other team’s chances of a win... while surprisingly also nearly halving the possibility of a draw. England being England, their run rate means they should pretty much never bother with the follow-on since time is not a factor when you can score 400+ in one day... but they like a challenge and, as Ben Stokes did say, the Blackcaps did still have to play very good cricket to haul them in. These were not normal cricketing activities.
The One Run Victory
Speaking of cricketing abnormalities, winning after following-on is clearly the superior achievement... but across the entire history of Test cricket winning by a single run is even rarer. In fact only once had it ever happened before, a legendary game back in 1993 when the West Indies did the deed against Australia at Adelaide.
It was Justin Langer’s debut and in a low-scoring game it was Langer who top-scored in Aussie’s chase with 54 from a target of 186. WI had a lead of 39 after the first innings but were dropped for 146 in their second attempt with Tim May taking 5/9. Those 186 runs were looking a long way off at 74/7 but Langer helped work things through and May himself chipped in with an unbeaten 42. May and Langer put on 42 runs for the ninth wicket. Then after Langer edged behind on the pull shot, Craig McDermott joined May and together they scored 40 of the remaining 42 runs required... until McDermott was caught behind off Courtney Walsh for 18. Windies won it by one run. They also went on to win the five-game series 2-1. It would be sixteen years before Australia next lost another home Test series.
There have also been two instances of ties. The West Indies and Australia tied in Brisbane in 1960, India and Australia also tied in Chennai in 1986. The first of those was especially wild as Aussie were 226/6 chasing 233 and somehow proceeded to lose four wickets for six runs – with three of those being run outs.
The reason for that being that it was the final over the final day. Wes Hall was bowling. Aussie needed six runs of eight balls (back in the days of 8-ball overs) with three wickets still in hand. The over went: 1lb Wkt 0 1b 1 2Wkt Wkt. Richie Benaud was the first wicket, out hooking. The other two were run outs. The lone single off the bat was a looped effort that should’ve been caught but bowler and fielder got mixed up both going for it. And Joe Solomon threw down the stumps from 12 yards on the final ball to prevent Aussie from winning a thriller.
The other one wasn’t quite as insane as that but it did also come down the final over. India needed four more runs and Aussie needed one wicket. Ravi Shastri faced a dot ball off Greg Matthews, then ran two followed by one to tie the scores... but expose the last man to the strike. That last man was Maninder Singh who had a Test batting average of 3.8 for his career. Two balls later he was out LBW and the match was tied.
There have also been two matches which ended as draws with the scores tied. Zimbabwe vs England in 1996. India vs West Indies in 2011. Both instances saw run outs on the final ball of the final day going for the victory... but with wickets still in hand. There’s a wikipedia page about all this, some good yarns therein.
The legendary One Run Victory is just as uncommon in kiwi first class cricket too, if you were wondering...
Spreading the picnic blanket out further, there have been 19 instances of games being decided by 15 runs or less. 12 of those were by 10 runs or less. Seven were by five or less. The only 2-run win in history was a legendary Ashes game at Edgbaston where England’s Steve Harmison got Michael Kasprowicz strangled down leg side after a wagging Aussie tail had gotten them to the brink of victory.
The Sweet Comforts Of Blackcaps Home Games
The talk leading into this Test, on the back of a bit of a hiding copped by the NZers in the day-nighter at Mount Maunganui, was mostly about England’s various winning streaks. They’d beaten the Blackcaps in four consecutive matches. They’d also won six consecutive matches overall, something that’s now happened seven times in their history with the record being eight wins on the trot set in 2004 (including home sweeps of NZ and WI). Could’ve pushed on towards that marker but nope, didn’t happen. It was also an opportunity for England to win every away Test across an entire winter for the first time since... wait for it... 1899. Yeah mate. They beat Pakistan three times then rocked up on our shores feeling greedy but that didn’t happen for them either. Oh well. Even still, the McCullum/Stokes era has seen nine wins and two defeats. One loss each to South Africa and to New Zealand. It’s been pretty bloody impressive.
Not so long ago the Blackcaps themselves were practically unbeatable in Aotearoa. That golden era run, how good. They went 17 matches in a row without defeat between March 2017 and January 2022. 13 wins and 4 draws. There’s a whole-arse yarn about that streak right here.
But those ones felt like sepia-toned memories when England were laying the beat down at the Mount. That defeat made it three straight home series that they’d failed to win. 1-1 against Bangladesh. 1-1 against South Africa. Defeat at the Mount meant no chance of a series win against England either. Not what we’re used to but definitely what we’re becoming accustomed to.
And yet... they may have started losing home matches again but they haven’t been losing home series. This unlikeliest of comeback victories meant a 1-1 series draw hence the New Zealanders have now gone 11 consecutive home series without defeat. Gotta go back to South Africa’s tour in early 2017, the same tour that provided the loss that the 17-game unbeaten streak blossomed out of. Eight series wins and three series draws. The draws have come from the three most recent tours.
Wickets In The Clutch
The Blackcaps mentality to keep fighting all the way until the last possible moment was massively commendable throughout that last day’s play. There’s a reason they were able to do that though: they’ve been there before. Dudes like Neil Wagner and Tim Southee in particular have been a part of several fourth innings, final day bowling efforts.
Southee has taken an NZ-record 54 wickets in the fourth innings of matches. Strangely he’s only got best figures of 3/28 despite a tidy average of 29.79 in there. Neil Wagner’s the main destroyer though. 33 fourth innings wickets at 24.12 average – in matches that NZ specifically won those figures surge to 26 wickets @ 18.53. That’s two scalps and about ten runs of average better than Trent Boult in the same situations.
Sure enough it was Neil Wagner who did most of the leg work on day five against England. His final spell was a 9.2-over traipse through the trenches bowling into the wind... and he took 3/38, getting the wickets of the two set batsmen from England’s big partnership (Root & Stokes) as well as the final one. Plus he took two tough catches on the boundary for the other two wickets in between. He was literally involved in all of the final five wickets to fall (plus he’d gotten Ollie Pope out earlier in the day).
Wagner’s fate seems to be more closely aligned with that of his team than most players. 141 wickets at 21.70 when the Blackcaps win, 49 at 35.40 in draws, and 68 at 32.67 in losses. Whether that’s because he succeeds when the team is going well or whether the team goes well because he’s succeeding is one of those great chicken/egg mysteries... although there are more drastic indicators of Blackcaps dependants.
Kane Williamson, The Prince Who Was Promised
Take Kane Williamson for example...
Kane Williamson in Wins – 4230 runs | 78.33 average | 16 100s
Kane Williamson in Draws – 2012 runs | 64.90 average | 8 100s
Kane Williamson in Losses – 1545 runs | 25.32 average | 2 100s
He’s had the same number of innings in wins as there are in defeats, by the way. 62 of each. Most players are going to have a huge gap between their stats in wins and losses – these stats reflect performances and performances determine results so it’s directly correlated – but that’s more than a fifty-run swing. Tom Blundell and Daryl Mitchell both already have more hundies in losing causes than Williamson. That’s wild... and no critique of KW at all because clearly when he does score runs, the team tends not to lose, and he’s probably the major reason for that.
Such as we saw in this match. Following-on, Williamson was given a great platform thanks to that big Latham/Conway partnership. And he might have needed that too as he’d scored 10 combined runs in his first three innings of this series. First time he’s ever been dismissed for three straight single-digit scores in Test matches thus he was also on pace for his worst ever series of batting. Naturally he then scored a delicious century and ended up winning man of the match.
England is Williamson’s least favourite opponent. He averages just 36.85 against them – his lowest against any Test nation. The elbow injury hasn’t helped him lately, forcing him to miss a lot of cricket (including both those defeats against Bangladesh and South Africa – further fuel to the fire of B’Caps depending on KW), though having to face Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad as often as he has over the last couple years has also been a factor.
These are Williamson’s Test scores since the pandemic when facing England...
13, 1, 2, 15, 31, 48, 6, 0, 4, 132 | 252 total runs @ 25.2 average
These are Williamson’s Test scores since the pandemic when facing everyone else...
251, 129, 21, 238, 49, 52no, 18, 24, 200no, 36, 41 | 1059 total runs @ 117.67
That’s actually quite astonishing. Gotta figure the main reason for that is that pesky dynamic duo of Anderson and Broad. Anderson has dismissed Williamson nine times (average of 33.22) while Broad has gotten him six times (average 14.16). No other bowler has gotten him out more than five times, with three blokes tied on that tally: Kemar Roach, Ravichandran Ashwin, and the retired Pragyan Ojha.
But just as it was about to become A Thing, he went and scored a majestic match-winning big bopper of an innings and the good times recommenced. Sweet as. Nothing to worry about.
There was another notable thing that Williamson achieved in this Test. Trying to think what it was now. Something to do with... scoring runs... oh yeah that’s right: he’s now NZ’s all-time leading Test run scorer. Surpassed Luteru Ross Taylor and that’s a record that is going to stand for some time.
While we’re at it, spare a thought for England’s K-Mart alternative brand version of Kane Williamson. Because old mate Joe Root had a spectacular game himself, scoring 153no and 95 for a match aggregate of 248 which is tied for the 12th most runs in history on the losing side of a match. Second most ever for England (Herbert Sutcliffe scored 176 and 127 for 303 total against Aussie at Melbourne in 1925).
The overall record is held by Brian Lara with 221 and 139 (351 overall) for the West Indies against Sri Lanka in 2001, beating Andy Flower’s previous record of a 341-run aggregate which had only been set a couple months earlier when Zimbabwe faced South Africa. The New Zealand record is a recent one: Daryl Mitchell with 190 and 62no (258) against England at Nottingham back in June 2022. He’s number 10 all-time on the list. The former NZ-record holder for runs in a Test loss was Nathan Astle. You can probably guess which game that was.
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