As Bryden Carrs stood in the outfield at Hagley Oval under azure skies basking in the glow of his 10-wicket haul – one that showed his potential as an overseas safe-thief and muscled England to victory in the first Test – the speedy shell player has been described as having the “heart of a lion”.
Considering the words came from Ben Stokes, a man who has them proudly tattooed on his back, that could be taken as a pretty old dose of praise. Stokes cannot accumulate quick enough funds for the challenges ahead and the emergence of Carse, fresh from impressing on Pakistan’s less favorable pitches, is another rocket in the silo.
Playing in just his third Test match, Carse pushed New Zealand back with the short ball and viciously hunted front pads in between, finishing with match figures of 10 for 106 that shone like sunshine overhead. Add in the unbeaten 33 not out that he searched with the bat – plus the fact that Harry Brook’s 171 contained five pieces of fortune – and it became pretty clear why Kars was named man of the match at the end of that eight-wicket win.
“I don’t want to say I knew this day would come,” Carse said after taking six for 42 in New Zealand’s third innings 254 all out. “But I was always ambitious to think I could play cricket at this level. I’m just very proud of today’s performance.”
Hamilton in 2008. was the last time an England side, Ryan Sidebottom, took 10 wickets in two innings in an overseas Test and, leading 1-0 with two games to go, the current England side now have a golden chance to become the first of this tour to win a series in New Zealand. Although the hosts certainly won’t be so generous in Wellington next week after somehow dropping eight catches here.
Like Stokes, Kars is addicted to an inkblot and has a series of coordinates on his upper left arm. They represent the town of his birth Gqeberha in South Africa [Port Elizabeth as it was previously known]and the journey completed ended with three lions on his breast. It’s also been a bumpy ride at times, with both a career-threatening knee injury suffered at the end of 2021 and this year’s three-month ban for forgetting that professional cricketers are prohibited from betting on the sport.
The second of those sliding-door moments saw Stokes, his Durham team-mate, act as a mentor after he had a few scrapes of his own on the day. The advice was not to let the mistake define him as a person and Stokes, now his Test captain, is reaping the benefits. “When things like that come from someone who knows what it’s like to go through certain things, it means a little bit more to the person listening,” Stokes said. “He knows how valuable I am to him as a player. I guess that might make him run a bit harder when I ask him to bowl an extra over.”
Stokes described the Carse strap as three bowlers in one: capable of executing short-ball plans, keeping things tight and also perfecting those pads and pinch-stumps. All three qualities were on display here and not least on the fourth morning in which he got Nathan Smith and Matt Henry lbw in the space of five balls and later came back to end Mitchell’s dogged resistance. The surface had leveled out, Stokes was suffering from a stiff back and no one else looked as threatening.
It was the first time since 2021 that Cars took five wickets in first-class cricket and only the sixth of his career overall. While it was a personal satisfaction, it was also a reminder of England’s growing belief that Test cricket is a different beast to the Dukes ball game in April and attributed Trump statistics in the county.
After a 40-minute lunch break for England to consider their target of approaching 104 – 39 minutes 59 seconds of which were probably not required – Zac Crowley followed up his first-innings duck by returning Henry for just one . This led to Jacob Bethel coming out at number 3 and hitting an unbeaten 50 off just 37 balls. There was a bit of master and apprentice after he drew the final square, with Joe Root, unbeaten on 24 at the end of his 150th Test, hugging him as they left.
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The pressure was off in a sense as the pitch at Hagley Oval was too true not to make England’s victory a formality. But Bethel, a junior at 21, has shown a temperament and technique that make a first-class average of 25 misleading. He also hit quite a long ball, with the six he smoked against fellow newcomer Smith late on a beauty. “It was set up to express itself,” Stokes said, with the tone already set in the chase by a typically frenetic 18-ball 27 from Ben Duckett.
In many ways, Stokes was more impressed by Bethel’s 10 in the first innings; a passage of play that saw Henry and Tim Southee try the new ball under a leaden sky before New Zealand’s devastating run of eight missed catches began. “He played and missed a lot early on,” Stokes said. “But I liked the way he just scratched his mark, went to a straight leg and came back face up again. If he sticks to this attitude and swagger, I’m pretty sure he’ll be fine.
Tom Latham, Stokes’ opposite number, had a lot more to think about and so soon after that monumental 3-0 win in Indiabe it his side’s slippery fingers, a first innings 348 that was littered with soft dismissals, or whether Southee, having announced that this series would be his last, has actually run out of steam.
New Zealand’s way is not to panic, though, and Basin Reserve, the scene of next week’s second Test and the ground that witnessed their series-tying one-run victory over England last year, should be a fitting reminder of that.