DAY 3 TALKING POINTS
Follow UsWelcome back, Kyle Jamieson
He disappeared for a good while, the lab monster we all knew. Kyle Jamieson was invincible with the red-ball for the first 18 months of his Test career, but the wicketless outing at the Wankhede triggered a lean patch that lasted for no less than three months. After averaging 15.05 in the first 9 Tests of his career, Jamieson, between Dec 2021 and Feb 2022, averaged 32, picking just 14 wickets across 10 innings. At home, he was no longer the cheat code that he once was, and both Bangladesh and South Africa handled him rather comfortably.
All of us knew that Jamieson was due a dip in form, still it was bizarre to see him bowl like a human, for once.
What exactly happened during the off-season, we do not know. But the good news is that the human version of Jamieson is gone; the lab monster is back again.
Jamieson showed glimpses of his best form in the first innings — in which he instigated the English collapse by picking the first two wickets — but on Saturday, the 27-year-old well and truly returned back to his old, unplayable self.
Every time Williamson threw the ball to him, Jamieson made things happen. Day 3 provided relatively ‘good’ batting conditions, but when Jamieson had the ball, it was a game of survival for the English batters; the right-armer probed both the edges relentlessly.
Post-lunch he was so threatening that his skipper decided to bowl him 8 overs on the trot. It proved to be a masterstroke as Jamieson sent back Jonny Bairstow on the seventh over of his spell, setting up the right-hander perfectly; outswinger, outswinger, outswinger, outswinger and BOOM, inswinger that went through the gate.
There was a period of 17 overs — on either side of Tea — during which the English batters had some respite, but two hours before stumps, Jamieson returned for yet another lung-busting seven-over spell. And it was déjà vu again: a wicket on the penultimate over of the spell, this time, the big one of Ben Stokes.
On the day, Jamieson accounted for 80% of the English wickets to fall, but it really was a spell that transcended numbers. It was hard to look at him bowl and not go, ‘dayumn, he’s special’.
Even if England, somehow, manage to get over the line on Sunday, they’d do well to be on red-alert for the remainder of the series. For the Kyle Jamieson that bowled New Zealand to the WTC title seems to be back.
England’s blazing final-session counter attack
Heading into the final session of Day 3, New Zealand were firmly on the front foot. They’d run through 40% of the English side, and they were effectively two wickets away from sealing the game. It was the kind of position they’d have bitten your hand off for, if you’d offered it to them mid-way into Day 1, when they were bowled out for 132.
You could still say that Joe Root is all that stands between New Zealand and victory, but, as things stand, it is England who will start Day 4 as favorites. All thanks to the scathing counter-attack they launched in the final session of Day 3 which, in a way, seemed to take the visitors by surprise.
Till he was there at the crease, skipper Ben Stokes played the role of the aggressor. After scoring 15 off his first 61 balls, Stokes got his innings going with a ferocious back-foot punch off Trent Boult, in the third over of the final session, Two overs later, once again off Boult, he crunched an eerily similar drive.
Across his next 25 balls, Stokes managed to get away just one more boundary, but around this point, the southpaw’s intentions were starting to become clear: he was attacking 26% of the deliveries he was facing against pace, nearly twice as much as the subsequent figure in the first 60 balls of his innings. It certainly was a conscious approach to be positive.
To England’s dismay, Stokes perished almost immediately after the 17-run over off Ajaz Patel, just when he was about to hit overdrive mode. But once the skipper departed, Root took charge.
For 90 balls, till he had Stokes at the other end, Root did nothing but survive. He struck at 37.7 and was able to get away just three boundaries. The final hour of the day, however, saw the former skipper bash 43 runs off just 41 balls, switching to ODI mode out of nowhere.
With the ball getting older and the Kiwi bowlers tiring, Root sensed an opportunity to put the BlackCaps to the sword late in the day. He batted with far more urgency, took calculated risks and attacked a staggering 56.1% of the balls he faced in the final hour, nearly double of what he’d done in his first 90 balls (30.0%). The counter-attack shook the tired Kiwi bowlers, who pretty much had nowhere to go late in the day. It even frustrated Tim Southee, who uncharacteristically fired a ball back at the batter in anger.
43 of the 57 runs that came post Stokes’ dismissal were scored by Root, but it would be unfair to not highlight the role of Ben Foakes. Being the bridge between the recognized batters and a very long tail, Foakes absorbed all the pressure to ensure that the Kiwis were kept at bay. He only scored 9 runs, but the 38 dots he played proved invaluable, for it meant England closed out the day having lost just a solitary wicket in the final session.
