The English media didn't hold back in their assessment of England's historic capitulation in the first day of the day-night Test against New Zealand.
Scyld Berry in The Daily Telegraph: "It was the most amazing session of 20.4 overs. Yet England's pitiful total of 58 was entirely explicable because they
batted with flabbergasting feebleness and the naivety of schoolboys without a coach - in broad daylight too, not at the bewitching hour of twilight when pink balls are believed to assume a life of their own."
Ali Martin in The Guardian: "If there is any hope to be found from a howling collapse of 58 all out in the first session of a Test series, then it is that those running the England team wake up from what feels an interminable torpor away from home."
Vic Marks in The Guardian: "At the close England were in more disarray than they ever experienced in Australia a few months ago. Stokes, despite all the optimistic noises coming from the England camp before the Test, was not only runless but also wicketless, since he was not fit enough to bowl a ball. At 175 for three with the unflappable Williamson unbeaten on 91, New Zealand were in the pink, England in despair."
Paul Newman in The Daily Mail: "We thought we had seen the worst England could muster this winter during a miserable Ashes series that ended in a 4-0 thrashing. We were very, very wrong. It turns out England saved one of their worst batting performances in modern memory — a staggeringly inept 58 all out — for the closing stages of their longest winter away since the days they travelled on tour by boat."
