New Zealand v England 2nd Test

Brook and Root cash in

England batted first at the Basin Reserve under Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes's attacking approach to Test cricket, an approach that had already turned a struggling side into one that scored fast and declared early. Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett and Ollie Pope all fell cheaply, and England were 21 for 3 inside seven overs. Joe Root and Harry Brook then put on 302 for the fourth wicket, Brook playing with a freedom that took him to 186 from 176 balls with 24 fours and five sixes, the highest score of the match. Root was unbeaten on 153 when Stokes declared on 435 for 8, a total built on little more than a session and a half of untroubled batting after the early wickets.

It was a declaration made from a position of confidence rather than caution. Matt Henry took 4 for 100 and Tim Southee 1 for 93 for New Zealand, but neither bowling attack had troubled Root and Brook once they were set, and England's total left New Zealand needing to bat out a long way from parity just to avoid the follow-on.

The follow-on

They did not manage it. New Zealand collapsed to 21 for 3 in their own first innings and were never able to rebuild fully, Tom Blundell's 38 the highest score outside an eighth-wicket stand of 98 between Tim Southee, who made a rapid 73 from 49 balls with six sixes, and Blundell. James Anderson took 3 for 37 and Stuart Broad 4 for 61, and New Zealand were all out for 209, 226 runs behind. With more than three days of the match still to play, Stokes enforced the follow-on and sent New Zealand back out to bat again straight away.

It is a decision captains make far less often than they once did, wary of tiring their own bowlers by asking them to bowl twice in a row without a rest. What followed became one of the most cited arguments for caution in the modern game, and also one of the greatest advertisements for playing without it.

Williamson bats two days

New Zealand's second innings began far more solidly than their first: Tom Latham and Devon Conway put on 149 for the opening wicket, Conway falling for 61, and Latham followed soon after for 83, exactly the platform their top order had lacked first time round. Kane Williamson, the side's most experienced batter, then built an innings that would define the match, working through partnerships with Will Young, Henry Nicholls, Daryl Mitchell and finally Tom Blundell, whom he shared a stand of 158 with for the sixth wicket. Williamson made 132 from 282 balls before he was the last recognised batter out, caught off Harry Brook with the score on 455. New Zealand were eventually all out for 483, a lead, combined with their first innings, that set England a target.

Jack Leach bowled 61.3 overs in that innings alone and took 5 for 157, the heaviest workload of the match for any bowler, a cost that Stokes's decision to enforce the follow-on had always risked. England needed 258 to win, a target built from two New Zealand innings against their own one.

England set a target

England began their chase needing to bat out the best part of two days, and for a while Root and Ben Stokes did exactly that, adding 121 for the sixth wicket after early wickets had put England under pressure. Then Neil Wagner struck twice in the space of a single run: Stokes was caught off him for 33, and Root, so well set for a match-defining hundred, was caught off him too, for 95, almost immediately after. From 201 for 6 England lost their last four wickets for just 55 runs as Wagner in particular found the short ball hard to leave and hard to play.

Ben Foakes made 35 lower down the order, and Jack Leach, batting at number ten, was still there unbeaten on 1 when James Anderson, the last man, was caught off Wagner. England were all out for 256, two runs short of the 258 they needed. New Zealand had won by 1 run.

Wagner and the tail

Neil Wagner's figures in that final innings, 4 for 62 from 15.2 overs, do not look overwhelming on paper, but the wickets came at the moments that decided the match: Ollie Pope, Joe Root, Ben Stokes and finally Anderson, each dismissal chipping away at England's order. Tim Southee, the New Zealand captain, took 3 for 45 in the same innings, adding to his unlikely 73 with the bat four days earlier, a match in which he contributed with both bat and ball to what was in the end the smallest winning margin possible in a game decided by runs.

Kane Williamson was named player of the match for his 132, an innings that on its own would not have been enough without the follow-on collapse he helped New Zealand recover from, and without the bowling that followed it.

One run

A one-run win is the smallest margin a Test match can be decided by when the result is given in runs rather than wickets, and it had happened only a handful of times before in the long history of the format. What made Wellington 2023 stand apart was the shape of the match around it: New Zealand had been forced to follow on, 226 runs behind, with more than three days still to survive, and had come back not just to save the game but to win it. Test cricket has been played since 1877, and a side has rarely turned a follow-on into victory of any kind, let alone by the narrowest margin the sport allows.

England's total of 435 for 8 declared, built inside little more than a day's batting by Root and Brook, had looked at the time like the platform for an easy win. Instead it became the total that a below-par New Zealand performance in their first innings had to survive, then chase down twice over, and very nearly did not.

The rarest margin

The full scorecard for the match, every fall of wicket and partnership across all four innings, is on this page, and you can see how these two sides were built on the England and New Zealand team pages. Harry Brook's 186 and Kane Williamson's 132 sit either side of a game that turned on a follow-on decision and a bowling spell from Neil Wagner in the final session. In The Follow-On you can pick either XI and try to find one run of daylight the other way.

Sources

• CricArcade Test archive: the full scorecard, fall of wickets and partnerships on this page
• ESPNcricinfo: New Zealand v England, 2nd Test, Basin Reserve 2023, scorecard and report
• Wisden Cricketers' Almanack 2024: New Zealand v England