James Wallace rounds up the moments you might’ve missed from the first day of the second Test, from the re-emergence of Chris Woakes’ abundant facial hair to Mark Butcher’s lesser-spotted snarl.
Ch-Ch-Changes
Has Joe Root been smoking astro-turf? England’s captain, not shy of a musical affectation, channelled David Bowie and went with a notably ‘freaky’ line up for the second Test in Hamilton. Fair’s fair, they gave the normcore approach to Test cricket a solitary crack in Mount Maunganui and they got pummelled, so why not run roughshod over logic and reason?
This prompted a switch over to the harshly lit death-star-studio over at Sky just in time to see Mark Butcher in mid flow. Butch was veering drastically away from his default setting of ‘laidback cool uncle’ and straying into apoplectic-dad-on-long-bank-holiday-journey-with-the-kids territory as he exasperatingly declared England’s selection as ‘nonsense’ . When you are prodding ‘Butch’ into vein-popping rant mode it might be time to take stock. Tom Latham’s compact and largely untroubled innings compounded this view. With the rains arriving at tea to halt New Zealand and you feel only spare England’s blushes for another day.
Still, we’ve always got Woakes. Did I mention him? Where there’s a Woakes there’s a way.
