When Harry Brook walked to the crease at 26-3, England were enduring a torrid morning having been asked to bat by New Zealand skipper Tom Latham on day one of the second Test. By the time Jacob Bethell was strangled down the leg-side off the bowling of Nathan Smith, England were in serious peril on 43-4. Matt Henry and Nathan Smith had the ball hooping round corners and England looked destined to be bundled out cheaply and give New Zealand a foothold in the series.

To put the difficulty of that first hour into context, Matt Henry had bowled 25 deliveries and taken two wickets before conceding his first run. And according to CricViz, since such data started to be gathered in 2006, England’s false shot percentage of 42 has never been higher during the first 13 overs of a Test match – the first 78 balls produced 19 play-and-misses and 14 edges. It makes what followed next, a scintillating counter-offensive from Harry Brook, scarcely believable.

At the start of the 15th over, with the score at 50-4, Brook decided it was time to release the shackles. Dancing down the track to Smith’s second delivery, so pure was the strike, the ball sailed clean out of the Basin Reserve over extra-cover and was last seen bouncing down the encircling Buckle Street. It was beautiful and brutal in equal measure, part ballet dancer, part boxer. It was calculated too, a cut and a pull bringing two more boundaries as 20 runs came from the over.

“They had to try and bowl at the stumps early on and I felt like the time to run down was then and cash in with it being full,” Brook explained at stumps. “I just tried to take them off their lines and lengths and stop them from bowling at the stumps really.” As is so often the case with this England team, when the ‘go hard’ approach isn’t working, they simply go harder.

That effortless ‘up and over’ extra-cover drive is becoming something of a signature shot for Brook. Today it brought him three of his five maximums. “It actually felt like a fairly easy shot today,” he said. “I was trying to clip off my hip or run it down and it just wasn’t working so I felt like getting as close to the pitch of the ball today was a lot easier for me.”

In truth, everything looked easy for Brook today. Local broadcaster TVNZ dubbed the England man ‘Mr Nine Lives’ as he came out to bat following the five opportunities gifted to the BlackCaps during his 171 last week in Christchurch. Today, for 194 minutes and 115 balls, his 123 was chanceless – when you consider how bowler-friendly the conditions were and the degree of risk he was taking – this was truly astonishing. Brook now averages 91.50 in overseas Test matches, and seven of his eight Test match centuries have now come on foreign soil.

Such was the imperious nature of Brook’s innings, it felt like it was going to take something special to remove him. However his sublime knock came to a curious (if not quite ridiculous) end just before tea, being run out by bowler Nathan Smith when attempting to take a quick single into the leg-side. “I thought it had gone a lot squarer and he’s a very quick runner as well, it was a good bit of fielding and a misjudgement from me.” It was Brook’s only miscalculation of the day.

“I think that might be my favourite hundred so far,” he said. “I enjoyed that a lot.” Considering he had scored the little matter of 317 in Multan just eight weeks ago, what was it about this particular knock that eclipsed that innings and indeed all his other three figure scores? “That pitch [Multan] was extremely flat and you could just lean on it and the outfield was rapid so it would just go for four, here in those circumstances and the situation of the game, the pitch and the way I played, I really felt like I was putting them under a lot of pressure.”

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