KEY POINTS:
Without wanting to blow a kiss of death, this is a highly appropriate time to pay tribute to the most gallant unit in New Zealand sport - the national cricket team's lower order batting.
Once again the top order - in this case batters one to four - failed in the soggy test at Lords, leaving the tail-gunners to fire the bullets.
Our middle/lower order has long been a place of cameos and charisma, fearlessness and folklore.
For the umpteenth time in our cricket history, blokes who don't always bowl or perhaps even keep wicket as well as they should have proved masters with the bat in comparison to those who are paid principally to do so.
Leaving Chris Martin aside - even by No 11 standards he's an absolute shocker who has made us realise that Peter Petherick wasn't actually too bad - we are reliant again on the bottom batters to get parity with the Poms.
The Black Caps may have taken various routes to England but they landed on their feet at Lords - the snotty and fabled home of cricket where the home side often struggles.
Over two innings, the Black Caps' top four averaged less than 20 per man per innings. Leading the rescuing cavalry was the wicketkeeper, who has been pushed up to number five, and the all-rounder who lives at number seven.
Chief among the supporters for Brendon McCullum and Jacob Oram was the captain Daniel Vettori, who is parked at number eight where he has emerged as our best test batsman of the era.
It must make for strange conversations at net practice, where the designated batters might be tempted to wear helmets from go to whoa thus saving them the pain of looking the bowlers in the eye.
It was a highly encouraging start to the three-test series, because these Black Caps were supposed to be pre-exploded cannon fodder.
You fear though that this will eventually turn out to be the case unless Jamie How, Ross Taylor and Co get their acts together and provide at least the odd massive score.
Because as unconvincing as England were as overwhelming favourites, their four top batsmen did provide 230-odd runs in the first innings, and their bowlers will only get better. And you can only push this rearguard batting action lark so far before conventional wisdom says it will fall over.
Or will it? Because New Zealand is awfully good at playing this back-to-front game.
The oddest thing about New Zealand cricket is that many of the great batting moments have been provided by blokes who wield the willow as if they went to a Sonny Bolstad finishing school.
This strange cricket journey started for me during a family venture from Auckland to Wellington in the early 1970s, which coincided with a partnership between Brian Hastings and Richard Collinge against Pakistan that seemed to last as long as our road trip.
Left-armer Collinge bowled with all the grace of a dog paddling frantically in the surf and that was elegance personified next to his batting. But he dug in for a world record 151-run stand at Eden Park. In an iconic moment for New Zealand cricket, it was Hastings, the proper batsman, who got out.
Where do you begin and end in recalling this top-drawer, lower-order stuff. Lance Cairns swinging one-handed sixes away, Chris Cairns taking this family power to new levels of excellence, John Bracewell digging in, Adam Parore chipping in with a couple of centuries, Richard Hadlee - of course, of course, of course - Tim Southee hitting a freakish score against England, Ian Smith ... now there's a memory.
The stocky Stockley tore India apart at Eden Park on one occasion so I rushed to see this in the flesh the next day. Sat down, and Smith was out next ball ...
What about the late Ken Wadsworth, who was the gallant Robin to Glenn Turner's Batman in the drawn away series against the West Indies in the early 1970s?
Even Danny Morrison, whose batting career was stuffed with more ducks than a fancy pillow, dug in for a last-wicket century stand with Nathan Astle to deny England a victory.
And now over to Perth, where batter Mark Greatbatch was supreme for 11 hours to save a test. Remember though that Chris Cairns kept him company for an hour and a half, and that number nine Martin Snedden was unbeaten for another three and a half. Miraculous stuff.
Needless to say then that our best opener since who knows when, Mark Richardson, was a bowler turned batter.
The modern breed includes Vettori, the most accomplished genuine lower-order batsman we've had if you get all technical and consider Hadlee and the younger Cairns to be middle-order all-rounders.
On to big Jacob Oram, who can stroke the ball an awful long way and is doing even better than where the more famous Hadlee and Cairns left off.
What about this one? In the mid-1980s, we played two spinners in the same team, which is a shock in itself. Bracewell and Stephen Boock put on a 124 for the last wicket against Australia in Sydney. It wasn't the flashest Aussie bowling line-up but it had proved a bit too flash for our top order.
As to how these batting roughnecks keep saving the day, maybe necessity is the mother of invention. And the deeds of those who have gone before persuade the latter-day hopefuls that anything is possible. Also, with fewer master cricketers than other leading nations, jack-of-all-trades types probably have a better chance of reaching the top.
It may also be that lower-order batters from other countries don't reach their full potential because the pressure is not on them to do so. But beyond that, I don't have an explanation.
Whatever the explanation, let's raise a bat to these inventive diehards who have propped up our cricket team for so long.
Long may it continue, because they need to now more than ever.
