Daniel Vettori. Photo / Mark Mitchell
One session decided the second test at the Basin Reserve - and on that, both captains, Daniel Vettori and Michael Vaughan were in total agreement.
When England batsmen Tim Ambrose and Paul Collingwood took their side from 136 for five to 300 for six primarily through the final
session last Friday, they gave their side the initiative on a pitch which always gave the bowlers help, and propelled them to a 126-run win with more than two sessions to spare yesterday.
"When we had them 130 for five we thought we'd made real inroads," Vettori said yesterday. "The score they posted was very good on that deck.
"We knew we had to bat pretty well. Unfortunately we didn't, they bowled well and it all comes back to that session. Take that session out and everything else went to plan. He [man of-the-match Ambrose with 102] took the game away from us."
Vettori praised the swing bowling of English trio Ryan Sidebottom, James Anderson and Stuart Broad, who shared 16 wickets in the test.
But he was disappointed that his top-five batsmen - at least one of whom had to make substantial runs if New Zealand were to firstly get close on the first innings and, secondly, push towards the huge 438-run second-innings target - were not up to a demanding job. But he veered away from bagging a pitch which helped England more than New Zealand.
"If you want to be a good team you've got to win in all types of conditions. You can't turn up in Sri Lanka and ask for a deck you want. You've got to be adaptable, but even England would admit they wouldn't want to play on a deck quite as sporting as that."
Vaughan was delighted at the way his team had risen from the trough of Hamilton, where they were thoroughly outplayed in the first test, and called the 164-run Ambrose-Collingwood alliance the "defining moment" of the test.
Vaughan knows more work needs to be done - five catches were dropped on Sunday - but the Basin was a step in the right direction.
"It sets the series up brilliantly. There are areas that we need to work on, and if we can I'm sure we can put New Zealand under pressure. But it's still a long way to go before we can start saying we're a proper team again."
